a man who smells a little too much like my grandfather raps 
on the door and i’m not able to reach his hand to shake it 
when he thrusts it my way. my mama insists it's rude not to try 
anyways. i wobble too far onto my tiptoes and give it a shot. a symphony 
of hushed screams and empty promises banish me 
to my little yellow bedroom. with tiny gentle hands, my favorite 
blue crayons are tucked into my power rangers lunchbox.
i arrange them next to the pencil drawings of cinderella 
my friend gave me at school yesterday. my favorite stuffed mouse Puffy tells 
me to be brave as the angry man from before tells us to follow.
Puffy says i’m getting so big now when i can stretch up into the big van 
without any help. so just like mama always says, i buckle myself in 
and then get Puffy’s buckle too
(he’s silly and doesn’t have any hands of his own, so i have to help him.)
i beam at the man in the rearview mirror.
 i almost didn’t catch him asking me how old i was—mama said i didn’t need 
my booster seat anymore so that means i’m five, almost six!
the lady with the two different sized feet asks me if there’s anything 
i would like to eat as we pass the big oak tree at the end of the street 
near my favorite park. i tell her that mama said if i was good and ate 
all of my spaghetti tonight, we could pick mulberries off of the tree 
in our front yard after dinner. she’ll let me stand on the hood of her car 
so i’m almost as tall as she is, but even then i’m not able to reach the best berries.
so that’s when she’ll put me on her shoulders and we’ll laugh at the berries 
she smooshes on my nose. why doesn’t the man that smells like grandpa 
notice the fireflies starting to come out?
aren’t they going to take me home for dinner?