I've been wondering when it stopped.
Was it me?
It could have been when we stopped
using the dining table,
when it became a storage desk for papers
and the chairs were moved
out of inconvenience.
Did it start that one Christmas
when you either barely made it or left
early? I can't remember
which.
Maybe it was kept in the boxes
we never unpacked,
I should look.
It might've stopped
when the world got too hard.
It must've made me hard too
because I remember the layers
of the shell I wear
forming.
Did it stop when my sixth grade year
was erased
from my memory or when I discovered
I could be someone foreign to you