By Joelle de Poto

I have never been against magic marker on scraped knees

because I was told it’ll wash off in the tub

and Crayola can’t kill ya!

 

I bet I could still win at my handmade board games

where intuition would triumph

(if you could pretend you

knew the rules better than me)

 

I haven’t stopped tap-tap-tapping the ceiling before I sleep

because maybe Grandma will get run over by a reindeer

if I don’t

(perhaps one more tap for good measure)

 

I take myself back to Saturday trips to the Moon

taken in a tin foil rocket the size of my 20-year-old femur,

a vessel for the moon dust I carelessly displaced

 

I can still remember the tall tree in the reading corner

when the classroom was a rainforest

and I observed, so I, too, could be

as bold as the birds

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Joelle de Poto (she/her) ‘26 is a studio arts major. As a multimedia artist, she enjoys finding ways to integrate her studio practice with her creative writing practice. Her work is often driven by personal narratives surrounding themes of identity, mental health, and memory.