You think you’re something else now because, 

from the top bunk, your feet almost touch the 

ceiling when you stretch your legs above your 

head, straight as a compass needle pointing 

northward. I think you could dance on top 

of the world with those legs, spinning around 

your axis across the Ganges while balancing on 

toes curled to a pointe like the nose of a river dolphin. 

I want to tell you those freshwater dolphins swim 

blind and on their side through dim waters, 

compelled by distant light and echoes of lost sound, 

while the whole world unfurls before you now 

like a moonflower. Sometimes I think you radiate 

as if lit from within like the Painted Desert when 

the light is almost gone and the cliffs turn purple and 

glow like the inside of a flame, like a dream. 

I remember how, long before we divorced, your dad 

and I would drive from Phoenix across the Mogollon 

Rim to the Grand Canyon and back in a single day, 

and every time I could feel the air getting lighter and 

colder the further north we’d go and how I’d press my 

nose against the glass of the car window to measure our 

progress—just like when I was young, about your same 

age now, when your legs are almost long enough to  

reach the ceiling. I wonder if you feel like you’re

holding up the weight of our world on the bottom 

of your feet, the way firstborn daughters do, always 

wanting everything right. 

That’s what I want to say when you summon me a half 

hour past bedtime to perform your latest act in the 

art of growing up. I want to hold your childhood in my 

cupped hands and put it in a mason jar with holes in the 

lid, using its light to find my way. 

Instead, I ask how you got so lovely in only eleven years. 

You smile and pull the moon up to your chin like a blanket, 

like a dream.