what do you want to be when you grow up?

by Ashley Marie Johnson

Please answer below in one paragraph;

include your goals for the next ten years:

Maybe my sister and I

want to be the wind –

scattered and loud – escaping

high above the beetles

with their shingle-wings,

crawling up and burrowing

into the mountainside, keeping

their shelters and warmth

tucked into themselves.

Maybe she wants to be the field 

fawns once nestled down in –

mice hiding between wobbly legs

from hawks hovering above –

where tree roots were ripped away,

arteries once filled with earth,

leaves once filled with sky,

now filled with gravel and rust.

Maybe I want to be a raven,

a collector, caught in eddies,

watching, searching, but not for silver,

for words, so that when the time comes

I can arrange them, 

plant them into pavement, 

for a friend in an emptying parking lot:

You’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.

Change will not take 

and take and –

maybe I just want to be a sister.

Maybe I just want 

to be a home for you and me. 

Maybe that is enough.

I ask:

isn’t this enough?

Ashley Marie Johnson resides among the Wasatch Mountains of northern Utah where she often stares into space (and occasionally daydreams) in the company of her two cats. Her work has appeared in Apricot Press, Sublunary Review and Touchstones Literary Journal. She is also currently working on her first poetry chapbook.