My Little Pony Lunchbox
We walked seven blocks to and from the saint school
a ragtag bunch of kids with shoelaces around our scrawny necks
keys to adulthood cold-metalled over our banging hearts.
On the walk home we were leisurely, the only thing
waiting for us in our rentals was a ghost-note over
Tupperwared meals from a single-parent or maybe
a babysitter contemplating what to steal next.
There was one walk home that recalls, an echo of confusion
that bumps against my mind on dark winter mornings like today:
the boy in seventh grade with spit-shiny buck teeth, slack-jawed
and loud, his hand coming at my face, the fastslap, the tingling
stinging ovation in my cheek, his laughter and the other kids not caring
or laughing too or both.
He had an older brother who I thought about as I cried, as I was
serenaded by the slimy chant of my peers: cry-baby-cry-baby-cry-
baby. My backpack was heavy with emptiness. The yellow My Little Pony
plastic lunchbox gripped in my fist, a weapon I didn’t know to use.
I had thought about his older brother. He was cuter, living in my silent crush.
Where was he? If he’d slapped me, would I have cried?
Sometimes nostalgia has shadows.
Be kind, y’all. Spread love. Stay warm!
VANESSA SHIELDS 