a moon, worn as if it had been a shell

I woke up this morning an adolescent, and it feels weird. I conjured groups of staring, pointing girls, a devastating joke from a boy or two, Augustinian self-recrimination, the vestige of Catholic guilt. You're a pirate's dream, he said. A sunken chest! The sheet made a hood over my red fingertips, my nose twitched. I put on the garb of The Cheerful Mother, coaxed my son out of bed, poured coffee and thought about Sophie's birthday tomorrow, the ENT visit today, the dinner later with two dear friends, the thirty-eight years that have passed since eighth grade, how deep the gully, the last nineteen, onward.