BIG

Sometimes I feel like I’ve gone through the wash

but I’m supposed to be hand-dry.

Life is a dog chewing on my nose,

regardless of where I am

or how I hide away.

It’s always there gnawing -

I can still smell its breath.

The washer is gentle but the dryer is not,

and my fur is my skin and it’s a little fluffed

in a way that makes me look clean.

I’m the stuffed animal of a teenage girl

and as she puts me on her pillow,

only she notices that my brown beaded eye

is on her mattress outside of my head.

My name is Big, but she’s never felt smaller.

I’ve known her for ages,

for my entire life.

She’s given me one of my own.

But, she keeps on changing,

and I feel like a stranger to myself,

let alone to her.

I want her to love me like she used to

when she was little, and happy

in the biggest of ways.

When she slept through the night

and loved the way the sun came in through the window.

When she watched the birds, and

she would let herself cry because

she found the beauty in little things

before she changed and got older

and we both became big.

I miss when her big feelings were good ones.

Big becomes bigger and she never cries

for anyone to see,

except for where I am wedged,

in between her mattress and the wall

Far enough away to not be embarrassing

close enough to know

that she wishes she didn’t know her father.

She hates the role

of being his daughter.

Life is chewing on my nose,

but it’s got her in its jaws,

and the breath I smell on occasion

is imbedded in her brain.

Between boys and rumors,

terrible nights that she only prolongs

because sadness in the dark

is sadness for one,

is happiness in front of a crowd.

She walks along eggshells

while her friends get to stomp.

The timid steps of a child don’t align

with the vision of happiness

she desperately desires,

but when she steps like an adult,

stomps with a purpose,

the eggshells shatter and spray all around.

They cut her feet through the bottom of her sneakers

and she crawls again,

wincing every step of the way

into her room, where nobody can see

the blood seeping into her socks.

I want to tell her I love her,

that I see her hurt,

that I love her alive.

Yet I have no voice.

I have to wait

in between her mattress and the wall,

where I’ve been for the last decade.

Even though she’s moved away and back.

Even though I always went with her.

I know that she loves me,

because I went through the wash

and I went through the dryer

with a horribly dented nose

from the dogness of life.

She moved me to the pillow

for the first time in years,

whether for healing or out of pity.

She looked at my dropped, beaded eye

and fixed it where it belongs.

She cried just a little

and thought about God -

to see Him in the little things.

To see Him in her.

To see Him in me.

But I am her.

And I am her stuffed koala.