I think I'm becoming someone else...

(This is an odd little "short story" bit I found in an old journal, written in 1994...I think I knew what it meant back then.)

Mom and Dad are laughing as they comb your hair, and delight over hot-wired promises and southern stars too thick for constellations.

The months under quarantine, with eyes like glowing spires, the tickle of nothing waiting to welcome us seems natural to me. At least when you smile, and the sky smears across your glasses, you're stalled in transformation. It's hidden, out of my way, like mousetraps. At the same time, I still find myself on my knees, hungry for reservation. And, I'm still growing on the inside. Touched so soothingly by every cell's secret mutiny, I think I'm becoming someone else.

Is this the way you prefer I tell you? I know how you insist. But here even our fingernails are clean and everyone who coughs floats like trained horses.

I can feel it like little hints whispered with a thumb pressed to the back of my neck.