Our paper house sat
on the banks of the red river
and though mother
wasn't like other mothers

I was like other girls
trapped and lonely

and painting pictures
in the stars. I was slick

with old birth or early longing,
already halfway between

who I wanted to be and who I was.
Our floors were made of flame

but there was no wind
so we were as safe as anyone.

When spring came,
I walked for a very long time

up I-35, and at the end of the road,
I found a boy who placed earphones

onto my head and pumped opera
into my body. I can feel it still.

Underneath that treeless sky,
I was as changed as I would ever be.

Not even mother noticed.


About this poem
"One afternoon, in Oklahoma, when I was a teenager, I sat in a field, and a boy put his Sony Walkman on my head and blasted Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Music of the Night' into my ears. I had never heard anything so powerful. That moment made me completely reimagine everything I believed about art, beauty and possibility."
-Nicole Callihan

About Nicole Callihan
Nicole Callihan is the author of "SuperLoop" (Sock Monkey Press, 2014). She teaches at New York University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

***
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Nicole Callihan. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate