Grasshopper

I am ONCE AGAIN sorting things out of my childhood bedroom room, including what I believe is the last cache of old letters - mostly birthday notes and things of that ilk from high school.

It includes a poem that a friend wrote for me and about me; “Grasshopper” was one of my nicknames in high school. We all accrued a bunch of nicknames; this friend signed her letter Dead Mackerel/Katling/Tomato/Pouffy Butt. (The last is an allusion to the costume she wore playing Little Buttercup in H.M.S. Pinafore. I can’t recall why we called her Tomato.)

Grasshopper

Apart from the others,
Sitting folded into a miniscule place,
Lost in her world of flowing imagination.

The party goes on around her.
Shrieks of laughter echo through the room.
Pillows fly and zoom towards their targets.
She’s not there.

Physically she may be in the middle,
But inside she has escaped far away.
Where she winds up, or
What she does when she gets there..
I do not know.

All I can see are her petite arched feet
Tucked under her folded legs
Royal flowing hair golden on her back
And the carefully erected fortress
Giving her needed time of solitude
In a world beyond our own.