Destiny O. Birdsong

Everything That’s Happening Has Already Happened

You have already been in the fourth grade

            and had your first perm. You already believe 

glass jars on shelves can make you beautiful,

            so you grease your hair with so much Blue Magic 

its blond has a green tint in sunlight.

            Your sister has already called you a genetic freak

because she is in the sixth grade, and her friends

            ask too many questions, so she spits at you

the words that will one day eat holes in your intestines.

            You have eyes that cross—sometimes out, 

sometimes in—so tetherball is hard to play.

            You’ve spent recess after recess squatting along the edge 

of the playground, dreaming of what you cannot see,

            eating the honeysuckle growing through the chain-link fence.

Your teacher has already threatened you with what she knows: 

            stray dogs go there at night, but you

have spent most of your life chasing sweet,

            like the time your friends told you the new kid— 

the green-eyed one, whose buttery skin and California swag

            made him immediately popular in that small town— 

has a crush on you, but is too shy to tell you himself,

            so he wants you to meet him near the edge 

of the playground. Near your fence.

            Near your honeysuckle.

So you run to him, but he keeps moving farther away, 

            and you think maybe it’s just your eyes.

Even now, they’re always slightly out of focus— 

            you never see things for what they really are.

Though you saw his Cross Colors jersey, a jumping, bright blip 

            kiting across the lime-colored grass

of a town you already dream of leaving.

            You’ve already decided it’s best not to ask 

if he was in on it.

            Your friends have already made fun of you.

You’ve already forgiven them because 

            you’re already afraid of losing people

the way your mother is losing her teeth, which she brings home 

            in tiny envelopes still warm to the touch.

You’ve already become accustomed

            to handling other people’s dead things.

Two days later, while your friends were still

            giggling behind their hands, you mixed together 

raw egg and paprika and poured them on the kitchen floor.

            No one would come close enough to tell

it wasn’t vomit, so you stayed home from school, watching Garfield

            on a pallet you made in the living room.

You love Garfield, perhaps because, somehow, you know 

            most of your sorrows will demand his kind of sleep.

Your mother, with her new job and her new 

            insurance card, has taken you to the new

hospital, where a nurse prescribed bananas,

            rice, applesauce, toast, told you to come back 

in two weeks if symptoms persist. Your mother

            has already laid hands on you in the car.

They smelled like bleach, and that made you want to cry.

            There are real diseases stirring in you

that she cannot rebuke because they don’t yet have names.

            But there are already rooms you can’t re-enter.

There are already people you can’t look in the eye.

The Candy Lady, or (Post)Reaganomics: 1991

Ms. Jerleen: Sugar Mama before Beyoncé, 

with black pantyhose and terry-cloth slippers, 

a dark green floral muumuu, and a son

back from the Persian Gulf with shaky hands 

making change. Our mothers whispered shellshock,

and I imagined his veins shuddering with shards of pearl.

A husband with emphysema, and, still

the house reeked of cigars. Mouths to feed.

Her Kool-Aid freeze cups hooked you with the first sting

of tongue to gluey ice, the first whiff

of syrupy vapor rising from the Styrofoam cup.

Usually I wanted Stage Planks, but they were fifty cents

and Mama only gave us quarters at a time. That is, 

until another family started selling

too: vanilla moon pies, which Mama loved,

and sometimes she’d send us out at ten at night, 

peeking through the blinds as we crossed Roitan Drive 

away from the gray and orange sidings of Section 8

to the last few private houses on our street.

The family: a stepdad, two tween girls, and the woman 

who gave my mama her first job. The daddy and girls

would be awake, watching movies under a blanket.

Later, he’d go to jail for what he was doing 

when he heard my sister’s small-handed knock.

Ms. Jerleen couldn’t stand them: I got a permit 

to do what I do. Every time we came back,

her husband’s breathing grew louder. The son

started wandering the streets, rapping lyrics to himself. 

As she dropped each coin into a coffee can,

she talked about papers. We nodded our heads, agreeing. 

Then the other family lowered their prices, started pushing

Air Heads, Gushers—snacks you could share 

with the suburban kids without shame: a new

kind of high. We saw Ms. Jerleen less and less. 

Then one day, a strange woman answered her door. 

Previously published in Words Beats & Life.