My babysitter's back.

To be my mentor, my role model.
[for my confirmation]

But doesn't babysitter realize that she's more useful hiding in the back of my mind?

I know she's swimming in that milky fluid that surrounds my brain, popping out and skirting along the neurons only when babysitter feels the need. Doesn't she feel the awkwardness in her gills, in the knowledge that babysitter's been resurfaced for too long?

I wonder if she remembers.

Babysitter's trading frozen pepperoni pizzas for pot roast in our dining room. Instead of receiving a, "you know what to do!" over a dressed-up shoulder, she gets a four hour long conversation about her. And life after college, babysitter's job, babysitter's boyfriend.

I don't mind.
I just wonder if babysitter feels cheated.

Babysitter's traded an eight-year old unknowingly asking racist and stereotypical and far too sexual questions for her age for a fourteen-year old who eats cookie after cookie [calorie after calorie] for something to do while her mom fills the silence. Gone is the child who didn't realize when others were uncomfortable and thought she was skinny and cool and that guys just might not have cooties. For keeps is an insecure girl/teen with too many confusions that might/will burst forth from a gunshot.

Or at least the swirling wonders will make sure it's the result.

Babysitter's there talking about her boyfriend of eight years and actually being kind of humorous. I'm trying to think of something that won't bore and absolutely don't include my friend, the girl. No one would find them funny anyways. I find the girl funny 'cause that's what love is right? And what would babysitter think if she knew that I'd rather have the girl than any boyfriend, steady or non.

Would babysitter think she could've changed that?

I'm thinking of how babysitter used to braid my hair on the couch, of the spin-art that used to adorn both our walls, and does she remember how I always ate grapes while I sat on her lap on front of the tv? Does she think of anything at all as I pop these green seedless fruits into my mouth?

I want to tell her so many things.

I want to say that I missed her, and why didn't babysitter come back? That she shouldn't feel guilty but should've there to tuck me in once more. That she's the sister I never yet should've had, should've held onto longer. But gone are the days that babysitter could send me to bed and tell me to count to five hundred. And say that maybe, maybe if I was still awake, I could come back down and curl up next to her. I want one more lights out, one more 'I love you little sis' and one more chance to echo and actually mean it.

But I realize that I'll never get that chance.

Does she see that I'm stuck between talking like the kid she knew and the recluse/breakout SOMEone I might want to become?

Or doesn't she care at all because babysitter's now twenty-two and
All
Grown
Up
[and not the eight-years-older twelve-year-old that buckled me into car seats]
~