Recently while reading my dinosaur erotica poem 

at a festival I thought, Is this it? Is this the life I wanted 

when I was a child? To grow up to tell 

the world’s longest dinosaur dick joke 

to rooms full of strangers? Well no. Of course not. 

Though it’s true I loved dinosaurs and often 

would visualize their bones deep below me in the earth 

wherever I walked, my thoughts were not sexual. 

Mostly I wanted to stop wearing those awful sweaters 

with appliqué cats and collars my mother brought 

home from Northern Reflections. I wanted, 

if I’m honest, to be smarter than anyone. I wanted 

a journal with a lock but when I got one I wrote in it 

only once, recording in my best third-grade cursive: 

This Book Belongs to Kayla Czaga.

Whenever I said something embarrassing 

I wanted to switch schools or sail to ...