Picture

Me as a solitary child

Who reads alone at the dinner table

And in bed, draws in notebooks

Wears funny glasses.

Picture me when I go to camp

At eleven

Sit in the train car going to the country

Along with scores of shouting laughing children

When we get to camp I

Get the last bed in the bunkhouse

The one nobody wants next to the counselor.

I look at the other campers

All strong athletic loud

I share a bathroom with twenty girls

Nobody has time to brush my hair

Sometimes I hide in a cabin

Painting and

I make an ashtray for my mother

To give her when I get home.