sometimes we would make holes in the ocean, in little caves like children we fought to be the princess, we would fight for the best horse besides the brook that we would jump over. Valiant efforts, memories bought and folded inside pretty little books ribbons in my hair, and crazy cotton skirts with raspberry stains. My lips tasted like apricot juice, and I would hide inside those caves that were really just underwater jungles of weeds like the mermaid. and then I would lose my breath underneath and I would flail till i broke free because i always had to be the strong one. But the ocean, the lake, the river would remind me that they had made the whole of me and I was like a mermaid, never completely free of the tide sweeping by me, and here is my childhood laying in the grave of the pigeon i buried with a great deal of sadness because i didnt understand why he would not fly. I made him a tombstone out of a milk carton, 2%.