- "A Letter to the Playground Bully from Andrea, age 8 3/4."
Maybe there are cartwheels in your mouth.
Maybe your words will grow up to be gymnasts.
Maybe you've been kicking people with them by accident.
I know some people get a whole lot of rocking
in the rocking chair, and the ones who don't
sometimes get rocks and their voice boxes become slingshots.
Maybe you think my heart looks like a baby squirrel.
But guess what?
You absolutely missed when you tell the class
I have head lice, because guess what?
I 100% absolutely do not have head lice,
and even if I do, it is a fact
that head lice prefer clean heads over dirty ones,
so I am clean as a whistle on a teapot.
My mother says it is totally fine if I blow off steam,
as long as I speak in an octave my kindness can still reach.
My kindness knows mermaids never,
ever miss their legs in the water
'cause there are better ways to move
through the ocean than kicking.
So guess what?
If I ever have my own team,
I am picking everyone first, especially my friend
who has a stutter like a skipping record
'cause I know all of us are scratched,
even if you cannot hear it when we speak.
My mother says some people have heartbeats
that are knocking on doors that will never, ever open,
and I know my heart is a broken freezer chest.
That's why I can't keep anything frozen.
So no, I am not "always crying."
I am just thawing outside the lines,
and even if I am "always crying,"
it is a fact that salt is the only reason
everything floats so good in the Dead Sea,
and just 'cause no one ever passes notes to me
Doesn't mean I am not super duper.
In fact, my super duper might be a buoy or a paper boat
the next time your nose is stuck up the river,
'cause it is a fact that our hearts stop
for a millisecond every time we sneeze
and some people's houses have too much dust.
Some people's fathers are like attics.
I've heard attics have monsters
in their walls and shaky stairs.
If I lived in a house that had an attic,
I think I'd nightmare a burglar in my safety chest,
or maybe I'd look for rest in the sticks and stones
'cause my mother said a kid can only swallow so much punch
before he's drunk on his own fist,
but the only drunk I have ever known
was sleeping in the alley behind my church
and Jesus turned water into his wine,
so even God has his bad days, but on your bad days,
couldn't you just say, "Hey, I'm having a bad day,"
instead of telling me I'm stupid or poor
or that I dress like a boy,
'cause maybe I am a boy and a girl.
Maybe my name is Andrea Andrew. So what?
It is a fact that bumblebees have hair on their eyeballs
and people also should comb though everything they see,
like an anchorman is not a sailor,
like the clouds might be a pillow fight,
like my mother said,
"Every bird perched on the telephone wire
decides the direction of its flight
by the conversations running through its feet,"
so I know everything I speak can make hurricanes
in other people's veins or shine their shiny shine.
So maybe sometime, if somebody wanted to sit
beside me on the bus, I could say, "Guess what?"
It is a fact that manatees have vocal cords
even though they don't have ears,
just like Beethoven played music
even when he could no longer hear,
and I know every belt that has hit someone's back
is still a belt that was built to hold something up,
and it is a fact that Egyptians slept
on pillows made of stone.
But it's not hard for me to dream
That maybe one day you'll write me back
like the day I wrote the lightning bug to say,
I smashed my mason jar and I threw away the lid.
I didn't want to take a chance that I'd grow up to be a war.
I want to be a belly dance, or a pogo stick,
or an accordion, or the fingerprints the mason leaves
In the mortar between the bricks
To prove that he was here,
that he built a roof over someone's head
to keep the storm from their faith.
My mother says that's why we all were born.
And I think she's right.
So write back soon.
Sincerely yours.