Because I Won

I won

The bus doors creak as they swallow us up

like a big tin of sardines

with the sharp turn on the lid after Rachel has snuck one before dinner

we have sardines sometimes

Momma says it’s because she likes them

But she doesn’t like them and I think it’s because we are poor

like

Marbles against a wooden box,

rolling around in there and shaking

hitting the sides and tumbling across the grain

I have to sit at the back of the bus where the seats are hard and made of the oldest vinyl in Grant county

Papa says its cuz we dark, darker than the cold shadows behind the shed where we sit in August

Sometimes he says its because the white people are mean

the white people who sit at the front of the bus, with so much space between them

there is only room for thick thick pride, pride that you

gotta walk through to get to the back, pride that you

brush off your clothes and cough out as you pass

but I don’t believe him because I

have a friend who is white girl and she always wear cotton dresses to school

blue cotton and cotton she calls sea foam green

and the way she laughs when she says sea foam green as if she expects me not to know what it is

but I know because I asked my momma one day and she said it’s the color of our refrigerator

the cold aluminum sides the same as her soft cotton dresses

with their ruffles and collars and bits of lace

I know what lace is too

and she is the nicest girl in school because she told me once I could have a drink from her fountain and she wouldn’t tell no one and then she ran off and her laugh tinkled out and bounced off the playground walls

and someday, someday I am gonna marry her

Papa says it is a bit too early for that

seens how we are only eight years old and we don’t know

what marriage is anyhow

But I know I am gonna

Marry that girl because I won the biggest marble

last week from Tommy Swinton

I won the biggest marble

from Tommy Swinton and he said I couldn’t do it and they let me in their circle just so they could laugh at me, he said, and they did laugh, like angry dogs who haven’t been fed but I won it

And I am the new King at marbles

And no one can tell me no, now