BIRCH BARK

KRISTIN ITO

Writing by Writers, December 2022

Curly is the name of a Beanie Baby that Amelia gives me. He is tan with strands of coarse yarn for a mane, a soft white diamond on his forehead. I don’t really like horses, but Amelia is all about them. She’s the richest girl in school and has the biggest room I’ve ever seen, with her own bathroom and a shelf bordering the room near the ceiling just for her Breyer horse figurines. Some are dark coal, others the color of pumpkin pie. All are muscular. But Amelia isn’t a typical horse girl. She’s blonde and has aqua eyes, and when she crimps her hair and wears Strawberry Kiwi Comet Lip Smackers, I think she looks part sea nymph, like Casseopiea bridling a tsunami. My grandma, who’s four-foot-eleven, sees Amelia in photos and says, “She could be a model.” My grandma not only means that Amelia is tall, but that she looks like Barbie, that her skin is lighter and brighter than the rest of ours. Amelia and I play in the backyard most Fridays after school, and we peel gauzy layers of birch bark off the trees. It feels so delicate and beautiful in our hands. It feels like the moment when dizzy A minor scales shatter the air on the dance floor full of 7th graders that night, and Amelia looks at me from across the room and mouths: “At first I was afraid, I was petrified.”