Comely and crying in your flowered boots, you made all that wrapping paper seem so feckless.  I wanted to swallow you with my arms and steal you away as soon as possible, inscribing my plans to glue myself to your side in my mind.  Unclasping your fists from your father’s shirt, tears melted into your skin.  You were so vulnerable, like a leaf beneath the belly of a magnifying glass.  Smothered with attention, I only contributed to that.  Nobody deserved you, I wanted you all to myself and our world of adventures and words.  Through jealous eyes, I was mesmerized by something about you that intrigued me like paralyzed octupi in jars and I wanted you to think of me the same.  Too many braids and dull, she won too many times at wars over butterfly shirts.  Every moment spent in your presence I felt like your observant.  At your house we hid under the crab tree, the shed and neighbours lawns.  Away from the witch, she made my intestines feel like the Holocaust.  “She’s not a witch,” you’d say.  Her black licorice scream and clothes said otherwise, to me.  Soon the outside seeped into our tub of wonders and I tried to punch them away in the pit of your stomach.  And you too were shown into a basement and exposed to an unspeakable something that knit your lips and glazed your eyes.  We would always find a way through the secret passageway, ageless and immortal as we were.