vein

i.

there's a vein in my nose, or so 

my mother says, that's only 

visible when i'm 

going through a growth spurt. i

look in the mirror and i

never see it. i wake up 

one day, every day, and everything 

is irreversibly different. 

 

ii.

my bras don't fit and my duvet 

is tattered and the backs 

of my knees don't hurt. 

they used to. 

i used to not sleep for 

the growing pain. inches in a year. inches 

on the miles i ran, 

drove, hiked. 

 

iii.

tonight it's raining. i used to sleep 

with only 3 walls around me and 

the rain would come right in. 

alessia

would read me a story every night. she bought bamboo 

curtains to keep the rain

out of her bed. mine was deep enough 

in the cabin it didn't matter.

both our books 

got damp all the same. jesse told me i was a 

carbon copy of her. 

none of us knew yet. 

my name's from her. 

 

iv.

when i was 6 we had a cat

named minerva and a cat named spike. 

i played dozens 

of games of euchre with our med student roommate. the

garden had a small gazebo and

our upstairs neighbor was eve. 

when i was 6 i had a 

cd player and i'd listen to bill frisell every night to fall 

asleep, through the pain 

of my knees, through the pain

of only getting half an ibuprofen, 

through the pain of not yet knowing.