SmokeLong Quarterly

When your daughter turns nine you will see a child, peach fuzz on her legs and a curveless silhouette. You will see a spray of freckles dotting her unblemished skin. The glint of copper when the sun catches her hair.

When your daughter turns nine you will hear her giggle as she runs through the yard. Hear the gentle thud of her body hitting the grass as she tries to cartwheel; her whoop of joy when she nails it. The slam of the screen door as she runs in and out, in and out.

When your daughter turns nine she will stun you daily with how young nine is, what nine is: stuffed animals, long division, chapter books. Not the white-hot poker of your nine.

When your daughter turns nine you will look at every boy, every man with smoldering suspicion. You will reject sleepover requests from all but the most trusted of her friends. Build a firewall around her childish ways.

When your daughter turns nine she will not be afraid to undress for a bath. She will not ask for a lock on her bedroom door. She will not wet her pants when someone startles her. She will remain her chatty self, unconcerned what secrets might escape her lips.

When your daughter turns nine you will time travel thirty years, reunited with your sizzling flesh. You will fail to maintain the pretense that nine never happened. Stutter when a therapist asks when your brother started touching you. Taste the tang of bile when you answer.

You will be unable to look directly at your daughter’s nineness, blinded by the gulf between what could have been and what was. Grimy hands encircling your wrists. Light bouncing off stainless steel scissors you swung in vain. You will think you cannot survive this age twice.

But instead, you will close your eyes and lean in. Chauffeur her to school and games and birthday parties. Clap until your hands are raw when she flips across the bouncy gymnastics mat.  Squeeze her extra tight as you tuck her in each night. Gather the embers of your charred nine and reshape them into fuel until her nine is done.

Get her to ten unscathed, and panic will stop clawing at your throat.

Ten, like every year after, doesn’t live in your body.

Ten’s flames don’t lick your skin.

By ten, you were already gone.