Seedy weejuns and mule slippers flopped fast
across the cold dewed lawn, laps of breath puffs
churned.  Doing what we did best
burning off the night air, welcoming dawn.

and there's something about
turning 16
and filling your lips with
the deepest red
in the mirror

how it feels
like you've become a rose
freshly unfurled from
some skeleton,
your colours as rich and
viscous as your dripping blood

yet a rose that's closed
in a glass jar, you are
turned and admired, you are
twirled in fingers
like the stem of a wineglass

because at 16,
you feel you are something
refined,
mature and flowing and
beautiful

older

but it's only
your mother's lipstick;
she too is getting old.
at night you take
the crimson off,
and the rest of you
comes into focus.
all your yellows, all your blues;
you will need to love them too

and don't you let the laughter
slide off from
your new scarlet mouth
because you're 16 now.
it will try to
and you will need to pick it up
off the floor

because you're 16 now
but remember one thing for me:
you are far more sturdy
than just a rose

you are a girl
you are every colour
you think you haven't become

somewhere
between 4 and 15,
your innocence was lost
in the angles of your cheeks

and the hardness
of your dreaming
wore itself down
like bark on a tree

now you're standing on an edge
looking over at the sea,
with softer hips and aeroplane feelings;
you know
that you are leaving

somewhere
after 4 and 15,
you learned to be gentle,
to hold yourself
more carefully

you were
a flightless bird.
you are
a girl, becoming
woman, turning
over her dreams
like tea leaves.

you know
that you are leaving
somewhere
behind.

A fire breathing dragon lived inside the nook of a tree,
Small enough to fit in a man's watch pocket,
Big enough to singe the bark around his door.
We peaked around the nearest trunk,
His smoke billowed around our adolescent ankles,
From his penny-sizes nostrils protruding from the plane of his oak.
We figured he ate the ivy snaking through his neighborhood,
But noticed no pin-sized tooth marks in surrounding leaves.

We then became bored with our own imagination.
We realized this black mark was only mold,
And we aged ten years.