Bench, an old friend

Theres a bench in a park. There — the steel one with the little holes. People will know if you’ve sat on this bench, they’ll be able to see the circles on your skin.

This bench looks like a girl with long, brown hair. It looks like a new pair of converse for the first day of 6th grade with a sandwich packed for lunch. This bench looks like putting on eyeliner in 1st period before rubbing it all off on the bus ride home.

It looks like growing up too late and growing up too fast. It looks like something that, at some point, was maybe aware of me. So, I sit. My short skirt slides up, and the holes latch onto my skin. I feel special, chosen. As I sit there, I feel myself.

The bench remembers me too, so it grips me tight and gives me its holes.

The town I grew up in had scene in the air. Skinny jeans, black oversized hoodies, converse — that’s what we wore. The cool kids had cool haircuts and older siblings who bought them cool alcohol.

At my school, the pretty girls weren’t just pretty, they’d pop you in the jaw too, unless they didn’t feel like it. Then they’d get someone else to drag your hair extensions out of your head at 2pm.

But usually, the real popular ones wouldn’t need nobody to help them out — nail techs in Los Alamos know how to lay acrylic down like mad. If you slept with the wrong girls boyfriend, you better pray that she found out at school and not at home, where she would have plenty of time to ice out her fists in preparation of seeing your face.

I look down at my legs and see that the tops have turned completely red. The sun is beaming down. The light is weak, I live in the pnw now, but my skin hasn’t had enough sun to lay any sort of base, so it’s probably pretty weak right now too.

I turn my face to look up at the sun, and open my eyes wide, staring the weak ball down. My eyes do not falter. I’ve trained for this, another time, in the place I’ve left. When my hair lay long and heavy down my back. When my legs were always wrapped in black jeans, body safe in the biggest, blackest sweatshirt I could find. A newer version of me, who wanted to absorb all the suns rays into herself. A younger version of me who didn’t want to take her sweatshirt off because she was afraid her pits would stink.

An angry girl, staring daggers into the New Mexico sun. Any angry girl, livid at her existence.

“Mija, come in from recess!”

The woman’s words startle me out of my daze, and I look around, but find no one except for

a few tears on my face, and a single blazing star in the sky.