They sit in a row outside the kindergarten, black, red, brown, all with those brass buckles.
Remember when you couldn't buckle your own overshoe or tie your own overshoe or tie your own shoe or cut your own meat and the tears running down like mud because you fell off your tricycle?
Remember, big fish, when you couldn't swim and simply slipped under like a stone frog?
The world wasn't yours.
It belonged to the big people.
Under your bed sat the wolf and he made a shadow when cars passed by at night.
They made you give up your nightlight and your teddy and your thumb.
Oh overshoes, don't you remember me, pushing you up and down in the winter snow?
Oh thumb,
I want a drink, it is dark, where are the big people, when will I get there, taking giant steps all day, each day and thinking nothing of it?