By Chris Ketchum

At ten, I meet myself in the mirror of my sister’s vanity, squeezed into the tiny
corset of her pale blue dress, Cinderella’s image printed on the breast like a
brooch. My little-boy pecs puff out like cleavage. The tulle skirt brushes against
my thighs, rising above the knee, billowing around my Fruit of the Looms as I
prance down the staircase to the dining room where my mother lights a candle
before dinner. She laughs to see me skip across the hardwood floor, turning and
twirling on the ball of my socked foot—and when she does, I know I want to
keep her laughing. I’m not sure why, but I speak in a higher voice, with a lisp,
and she laughs harder, and as I’m preening, brushing my cheeks with the back
of my hand, leaping into the air like the hippos in Fantasia, I notice the tears—
how they run down the corner of her nose, wetting her upper lip. I don’t know
why she’s crying—maybe I’m really that funny. So I keep dancing.

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Chris Ketchum is from northern Idaho. He is the Curb Creative Writing Fellow at Vanderbilt University, where he has served as a poetry editor for Nashville Review. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Five Points, RHINO Poetry, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere.