Wordless

A letter to the Playground bully by Andrea Gibson age 8 1/2

[Video of peom speaking on the side.]

maybe there are cartwheels in your mouth

maybe your words will grow up to be a gymnasts

maybe you have been kicking people with them by accident

I know some people get a whole lot of rocking in the rocking chair

and the ones who don’t sometimes get rocks in their voice boxes,

and their voice boxes become slingshots.

maybe you think my heart looks like a baby squirrel.

but you absolutely missed when you told the class I have head lice

‘cause I one hundred percent absolutely do not have head lice

and even if I do

it is a fact that head lice prefer clean heads over dirty ones

so I am clean as a whistle on a tea pot.

my mother says it is totally fine if I blow off steam

as long as i speak in an octave my kindness can still reach.

my kindness knows mermaids never ever miss their legs in the water

‘cause there are better ways to move through the ocean than kicking.

so guess what,

if I ever have my own team

I am picking everyone first

even the worst kid

and the kid with the stutter like a skipping record

‘cause I know all of us are scratched,

even if you can’t hear it when we speak.

my mother says most people have heartbeats

that are knocking on doors that will never open,

and I know my heart is a broken freezer chest

‘cause I can never keep anything frozen.

so no, I am not “always crying.”

I am just thawing outside of the lines.

and even if I am “always crying”

it is a fact

that salt is the only reason

everything floats so good in the dead sea.

and just ‘cause no one ever passes notes to me

doesn’t mean I am not super duper.

in fact, my super duper might be a buoy or a paper boat

the next time your nose gets stuck up the river

‘cause it is a fact

that our hearts stop every for a mili-second every time we sneeze

and some people’s houses have too much dust.

.

some people’s fathers are like attics

I’ve heard attics have monsters in their walls and shaky stares.

I think if I lived in a house with attic

I’d nightmare a burglar in my safety chest

and maybe I’d look for rest in the sticks and stones

‘cause my mother says a person can only swallow so much punch

before he’s drunk on his own fist

but the only drunk I ever knew

was sleeping in the alley behind our church

and jesus turned water into his wine

so even god has his bad days

but on your bad days couldn’t you just say

“hey I’m having a bad day,”

instead of telling me I’m stupid or poor,

or telling me I dress like a boy

‘cause maybe I am a boy AND a girl

maybe my name is Andrea Andrew.

so what.

it is a fact that bumblebees have hair on their eyes

and humans, also, should comb though everything they see.

like

an anchorman is not a sailor.

like the clouds might be a pillow fight.

like my mother says,

“every bird perched on a telephone wire

will listen to the conversations running through its feet

to decide the direction of its flight.”

so I know every word we speak

can make hurricanes in people’s weather veins

or shine their shiny shine

so maybe sometime you could sit beside me on the bus

and I could say,

“guess what, it is a fact that manatees have vocal chords

but do not have ears.

and Beethoven made music

even when he could no longer hear.

and I know every belt that has hit someone’s back

is still a belt that was built to hold something up.

and it is fact that Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone

but it’s not hard for me to dream

that maybe one day you’ll write me back

like the day I wrote the lightening bug to say,

I smashed my mason jar and I threw away the lid.

I didn’t want to take a chance that I’d grow up to be a war.

I want to be a belly dance or an accordion or a pogo stick

or the fingerprints the mason left

in the mortar between the bricks

to prove that he was here,

that he built a roof over someone’s head

to keep the storm from their faith,

my mother says that’s why we all were born.

and I think she’s right.

so write back soon.

sincerely yours.