She was staring out the window.
She was playing tic-tac-toe.
She was burning spiders with a magnifying glass.
She was straddling a pillow at night.
It was active sitting.
It was imaginative resting.
Closing her eyes, she was trying to think of the right things:
the sweat on Mr. Martinez’s mustache,
the bulge in the next-door neighbor’s shorts.
(In the next room, her mother was crying about bills and about debt and about family far away.)
She was opening her eyes. She was thinking of
the blond hairs on Ms. London’s wrist
the golden cross
how it looks like someone took a glitter pen
and drew it on there,
the phrase: I believe in you.
She was dreaming of
tracing her fingers on that honey neck
of yanking whatever God had put there
she was rubbing
the chain
all over her own neck and face,
and that stage between her legs.
She was feeling herself
start to glow.