“Here is the question: If you could talk to your 16-year-old self, what would you say? What advice, warnings, or encouragement would you give your younger self?”
Letter to Myself at Sixteen
I saw you on the street today
eyeliner planting little black seeds
in your tear ducts.
I picture you reading this
in one of your dreams, a jumble
of banned books, torn paper, frayed
blankets and advertising logos
where you work on your future
every rough or delicate detail
like the pieces in a child’s wooden puzzle:
shaped for incremental comprehension.
In this dream I have
your brief attention:
the past cannot be censored
and my archaeology is your future.
I want to protect you, bony girl
warn you away from what dazzles you
snatch the broken glass from your plate
but I’m just another
grown-up woman, creased brow
and a purse stuffed with middle-age
heading home to a quiet house
where paper sacks
filled with outgrown toys
wait by the door.
____________________________________________________© 2012 Erica Goss
Erica Goss bio: Erica Goss is the winner of the 2011 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Contest. Her chapbook, Wild Place, was published in 2012 by Finishing Line Press. Her poems, articles and reviews have appeared in many journals, most recently Connotation Press, Hotel Amerika, Pearl, Main Street Rag, Rattle, Eclectica, Blood Lotus, Café Review, Zoland Poetry, Comstock Review, Lake Effect, and Perigee. She won the first Edwin Markham Poetry Prize in 2007, judged by California’s Poet Laureate Al Young, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2010. Erica is a contributing editor for Cerise Press, and writes a column on video poems for Connotation Press. She holds an MFA from San Jose State University. Visit her website.