Peppermint Patty

Tides thrash inside me, Peppermint Patty,
a little red head at the shore of my stomach —
and Chuck's laugh is a gull that circles her,
bright and easy, while I stand ankle-deep and trembling.
I wanted to be brave. I wanted to be a dock.
Instead my knees were a small ship made of paper.

I held Linus’ blanket like a flag at half-mast,
felt its wool against my palm — safety, shame, the same cloth.
You asked what happened at girls’ camp; listen:
I met the sun in someone else’s hair and learned my shadow’s shape.
She smiled in a way that made the map of Chuck’s heart obvious,
and the compass in my chest spun, unreadable.

The world went high-octane for a heartbeat —
a fever in a shock wave, my core humming like a borrowed engine.
I tasted salt, panic, and the sour-sweet of sudden clarity:
that the one I’d been defending in stories was already worshiping elsewhere.
I folded myself into smaller jokes, practiced my own ridiculousness,
like a trick meant to charm; the trick failed, and I kept performing.

I cried and cried — not because I was weak, Linus,
but because I had been keeping a long list of “not-enough”
in a drawer under my ribs. I pulled it out and read it aloud:
big nose, split ends splitting into epic sagas, face a map where roads never meet.
I told the paper-list I loved it anyway, like a child coaxing a bruise.
The tears were maps: tributaries of what I hoped for and what I feared.

Tides thrash inside, baby, I felt every undertow —
the skyline fell in the distance like a paper city,
and for a moment I thought I’d uncovered all his secrets.
Turns out there were more rooms in his head, more ceilings painted with other names.
You adored me before, my heart whispered, and then: was that true?
Or were those pages I’d read only drafts, never signed?

Play casino holes of my eyeballs, it sounded like a dare —
I rolled the dice on my thighs and watched numbers tumble like small planets.
She laughed and the dice favored her; I sped up my breath just to match her cadence,
a desperate metronome trying to sync with a song I didn’t know the words to.
I made a fool of myself and didn’t care — the foolishness felt honest,
a protest against the careful performance of being fine.

Oh, my good-looking boy — an echo that both flatters and haunts,
a refrain that paints him golden and leaves me in graphite.
He is not who he is to everyone; he is a different sun to different cities.
And I? I am not who I am to anyone these days, not even to myself.
I wear my own face like borrowed theater make-up, smiling wide on stage while the curtain trembles.

I remember standing in front of her, small and luminous,
like a moth caught between a lamp and a storm.
She was pretty in the way summer is pretty — careless, unforced, inevitable.
I felt my childhood fold into me and close the windows of my confidence.
I cried until my throat knew the song of loss by heart,
until the seams of my laugh unraveled into honest noise.

They told us camp would change us, Linus — and it did:
it taught me how quick love can be to point elsewhere,
and how slow it can be to point back.
My blanket was heavy with salt and truth when you handed it back:
its smell was comfort, yes, but also the echo of being small in a big world.
You made a face at me, as only Linus can, chastising and kind,
and I felt the ridiculousness of my own catastrophes.

The skyline falls as I try to make sense of it all —
buildings tilt, neon signs flicker into confessions.
I thought I’d read the map of his eyes, traced every alley, every skylight;
I thought I’d known where he kept his keys. But there are basements, Linus,
and attics he never takes me to. Turns out there’s more.

You adored me before, the thought returns like a coin in a pocket:
cold, metallic truth that jingles when I move. Did you adore me then?
Did I imagine constellations where you only saw streetlamps?
I try to tell the story straight, but my sentences trip over their own feelings:
I stood there with my hands in my pockets: comic, awkward, human.

There’s a bridge in my chest that keeps creaking — it’s called expectation.
I cross it anyway, even when it is wet with someone else’s laughter.
Playful winds push at me, daring me to be clever, to be neat, to be enough.
But cleanness is not the measure of the brave; messy is.
I am messy like autumn leaves — beautiful, loud, likely to trip you up.
And I am tired of shrinking to fit someone else’s photograph.

Oh, my good looking boy — you are a chorus in my head,
and I sing you softly into the pillowcases of nights I cannot sleep.
You are not who you are to anyone, not entirely; you are a prism,
and I am only one angle, catching the light and thinking it is all.

The camp lights dim, and we walk back to cabins with unfamiliar steps.
I tuck my big nose into a sweater, try to laugh at the split ends of the world.
I feel ridiculous and tall at once — contradictory, stubborn as a weed.
I do not want your pity, Linus. I want my own tenderness returned to me.

So I cry, loudly enough to scare the moon,
and the moon listens because it knows about lonely vigils.
I cry until my voice is a new instrument, tuned to the frequency of survival.
Crying is not the opposite of being brave; sometimes it is the bravest song.

The refrain comes again, softer now, almost a prayer:
My good looking boy — I name him and un-name him in the same breath.
I am learning that loving someone else’s light does not make mine disappear;
it only teaches me where I have been hiding my switch.

When camp ends, we will pack our little worlds into trunks and bus seats,
but the tides will keep moving in me, rewriting the shoreline of my heart.
I will keep the memory of that red-haired girl as a sunrise I once watched,
and I will keep my blanket as a witness to the fact that I survived.

One day, perhaps, someone will stand in front of me and see me whole —
not an earlier draft, not a smudged photograph, but the final print.
They will adore me in a way that does not demand I change the map,
but reads each street and name with a kind, patient hand.

Until then, Linus, hold my blanket steady when my hands tremble.
I will practice being kind to the mirror, singing refrains of my own making:
not “oh, my good looking boy” but “oh, my good-looking self,”
not pleading for that love to return, but planting it where it can grow.

Tides thrash inside me and sometimes they wreck the sandcastles,
but they also carve new beaches, unexpected and warm.
I will learn to laugh at my split ends and to braid them into crowns,
to make my big nose a landmark on the map of me.
I will be funny-looking in my own way and still worthy of being seen.

The skyline falls — yes — but it is only the old skyline, rearranging.
I will rise with the new architecture of my heart, Linus,
brick by awkward, beautiful brick.

by Onnaya