growing pains

by Carina Solis 

​          You are eight when you fold into the  
air conditioner hum, the solitary light of  
          your bedroom. In the softness, overheard  
conversations. You have thin walls, built on  
          vintage promises, woven in fractured glass. 
Through the cracks, watch his mouth slant  
          upwards, open wide to take in a visitor’s dialect. 
Bwai becomes boy. Fatha becomes father. 
          Farther, the gap between tongue and lisp between 
hand and nakedness. By twenty-two, the  
          calluses have smoothed themselves into the  
body of a stranger. She is sweet, white, perfect. 
          Rice filling in the hollow of barren ribs, the  
wrinkles of your fatha's​ father’s face, 
          the hunger—desperation, for the rope around  
your neck, frayed threads of handsewn  
          catholic school uniforms, and taut skin. You want  
to feel nothing, so you marry her.  
          Take her limbs into your throat and swallow  
yourself whole. Birth a kid or two. Become  
          nuclear. At fifty-four, you carry his casket on  
your shoulders, crumple into grief like his  
          paper bag lunches. You weave your fingers into 
this fate, spin yourself in a red web of forgetting 
          forgiving, and live with the growing pains. It’s only  
sometimes you’ll remember Genesee Street.  
          ​The air conditioner and your one solitary light.  
How you always walked home alone. How the  
          sidewalk glistened in the rain. How you never had  
                              ​an umbrella.

---

Carina Solis is a fifteen-year-old writer living in Georgia. Her work is published or forthcoming in the Eunoia Review, Wrongdoing Mag, Gone Lawn, CLOVES, and elsewhere. Find her at carinasolis.carrd.co or on Twitter @CarinaS74562803.

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