Sara Shines

She is eleven today, the door to her room open, she’s sitting on her shag, cream carpet playing.  I stand at the stairs, listening, her voice rising and falling as she sings her favorite songs.  Fluttering around the house like a butterfly, getting ready in the morning.  Her white teeth shine inside her bright pink lipstick mouth.  Her grades rise and rise, her friends text or they don’t, her cat lies under her bed for some cool and quiet.  Some days she’s funny, silly, sensitive, inquisitive, brilliant, crabby, all her moods fill the rooms.  She grabs a blanket and drags the floor.  Dust swirls in gold streams behind her.  She walks through the house, a dragon queen, each window beating with summer.  Outside, her little brothers wait for her to take the lead in play.  They have a vibrant impatience.  When she steps out on the front porch, sun shimmers through her warm brown hair, the V of her legs, and fans out like wings under her arms as she raises them up.  As she goes, she folds all that light up in her arms and takes it with her.