On my sixteenth birthday.

I curled into a ball in the frayed, silk afterglow of childhood, 

When you are old

Your skin will become like paper,

And your bones will be like the wooden ribs

Of a lantern

So that the world will see the light in your chest.

But I don't need to wait

I hung in the sky, frowning down at the city below me

Scowling because Peter Pan went away.

I had stretched, and my body had run away

In the years since then.