wonder

her feet are too big

she prances anyway

dancing down the street

gleeful through the day

eyes alight with wonder

in the things she hasn't seen

mossy statues in a garden

silver fish under a stream

it didn't seem to matter

to the world when she was young

the way her hair was tangled

how she couldn't hold her tongue

but wooden blocks were stored away

in shelves within the basement

they said to leave her childhood there

she never learned what they meant

that they wanted a shell to grow

and hide the soft and ugly

hinged, of course, to let inside

the one, the one and only

but childhood is not a phase

softness is not obsolete

the ugly is the coin flip side

of praised virtues they feed

I thought I thought the way they did

I thought my mind was right

until I saw the wonder

in that dancing woman's eyes

she never seemed to understand

how she was meant to act

but when she cuts me with a smile

I bleed grateful that she's free of that