coffee grounds & cinnamon

oh, the sweetest honey drips

through double-paned glass

and butterflies soar as i feel your

clementine breath across my cheek

i am winter and you are summer

as my bed overflows with

I was too young to have a MySpace account, but I wanted one. I grew up watching MTV and I saw all of the teenagers with their Blackberries or their hot pink Razors. I watched reruns of Laguna Beach and Degrassi and I couldn’t wait to be a teenager. I had a babysitter who was 7 years older than me and she had everything I wanted. She was everything I wanted to be.

She had chunky red highlights and a belly button ring. She wore platform cheetah print stilettos and a push-up bra. She wore booty shorts and tank tops with innuendos that went straight over my 7-year old understanding of the world.

She would show me her MySpace profile whenever I went to her house. The Song on her MySpace profile was always “Promiscuous Girl” by Nelly Furtado. Maybe it was “Maneater,” but it's hard to remember now. But what I do remember was how much I idolized her. I wanted to be just like her when I was her age. All grown up at 14.

I still think of her sometimes when I see the Playboy bunny or hear the pop charts from 2007. When I watch Jersey Shore or see a Paul Frank t-shirt at the Goodwill. When I go to lock my bedroom door, then remember I can’t because she broke it.

I was relieved when my parents got rid of the old coffee table. I could still feel the bump on my head and the lump in my throat whenever I looked at it.

She taught me things that every girl should know. Like how to brush your hair starting at the ends so that it doesn’t hurt as bad. Or how to take your bra off and pull it through your sleeve without taking your shirt off.

I never much favored cartoons. I remember when she had a boy in her room and turned on South Park as a distraction and told me not to turn around.

I remember how much nicer she was to my brother.

My mom was so afraid that I would grow up to be just like her that she would say her name anytime I got an attitude.

I can still taste the Britney Spears perfume.

I still have the necklace she gave me.

I still feel envious that I wasn’t old enough to have a MySpace account or to have a Playboy charm on my flip phone or to go to house parties and dance with older boys while Chris Brown played loudly over the speakers.

Sometimes I still want to adorn my bed with hot pink cheetah print and Hello Kitty. To get chunky highlights in my hair with a deep side part. To wear zebra print duck nails and neon push-up bras. Tiny denim shorts and cropped tanks to show off my belly button ring or the star-shaped tan line from the sticker I put on my hip. To pierce my lip and act too old for my age. To add “Buttons” by the Pussycat Dolls to my MySpace Profile.

Can they smell it on me?

My inexperience reeks 

Of desperation and despair

They take one look and

Deem me unworthy 

Of companionship 

Time, energy, conversation

Wasted on the girl who

Looks like me

Too short, too round

Too pale, too loud

darkness taunts me with

coffee grounds weave

through giant evergreens

pine needles swirl with

golds and emeralds

raspberry bush plucked

of all its sweet rubies

waiting for the sunny

honey breeze to return

porch swing rusted from

decades of rain and snow

rotting wood bows

beneath a hair pin

hungry doe drags her snout

through the thick forest

trotting across an open field

desperate for bird feed

cinnamon whisps through

frostbitten forest air

reminiscent of firelit