Something There, Something Lost, Something Found
ISABEL EASON
Ten
My mother asks me how old I am today,
I hold up nine fingers instead of ten.
Silly.
The invitation to my birthday party
pinned on the fridge for everyone to see.
An announcement to the whole kingdom
that the princess’s special day
has arrived.
I am wearing a pink dress
it glistens in the June, winter sun
as I show off my dances to my esteemed guests.
My Mother and Father smile
as the crown on my head
grows more and more crooked
with every spin.
Grandma says pixie dust trickles along the ground
after each step I take.
I stumble while dancing,
a graze on the bottom of my chin.
Mum gives it a kiss
the graze heals.
An impressive turn out,
this party proved to be –
the castle is filled with people
all here for me.
Our backyard on Lynwood Avenue,
looked like how the world sounded
in books I had read
about little fairies
and beautiful Queens
and about –
magic.
When really,
it was just me,
my mum, and my dad
in our blue house on the corner.
My very own princess castle.
Where both of my grandfathers are still alive,
and I was given a pink pony as my present.
I named her Pony,
I hope every birthday is just like this one.
Fifteen
I get up early this morning,
enough time to complete my twelve-step routine.
1. concealer
2. powder
3. lip stick
An unkind, unfriendly sky
meant no sun squeezing itself
through my window.
Great.
My mother makes my ‘favourite’ breakfast,
Pancakes –
burnt
and no strawberries?
Didn’t want them anyway.
Mum tells me I don’t need all that makeup,
I don’t believe her.
She says I’m beautiful as she brushes my hair
fighting all the knots of my
curly-locked birds nest.
She tells me she is proud of me as I
throw books into my bag.
Proud of what.
That I’m reading Camus?
I quickly confirm that I
hate
what I see in the mirror,
before I make the picture frames on my walls
shake
as I slam my door shut behind me.
It is June again,
I can at last use sweaters
to guzzle my
disgusting body.
I don’t dance.
There is no sparkle,
no pixie dust.
Something is missing –
I can’t find it.
Twenty
I’ll be twenty next year.
This June’s air billows my skirt as it ruffles up
just in time for me to catch it.
My whimsy gets the better of me these days.
After all,
I have a lot of lost time
to catch up on.
The jacarandas are so beautiful this time of year,
their petals kiss my bare face before
falling quickly one by one onto my lap,
as I sit across from the boy who loves me.
I sleep with the window open,
hoping the wind blows in
even more of the solace I’ve grown to revere.
Birdsong wakes me up the next morning,
as I finally remember that this is what it is supposed to feel like.
I now know I do not have to be good,
I must find something in everything.
I now know what that something is.
It was magic –
all along.
Isabel Eason is a writer, poet, and appreciator of perspective. She often writes about her fears that growing up makes us less gentle, and her desperation to remain a person who is warm. Isabel’s work, despite being upmost morbid, comes from a place of admiration for life, stemming from a time where she struggled to continue living her own.
