Indian-style on the floor
Sitting in our orange satin costumes, the light and the dark washing over us
It was the beautiful fear of our own power that flipped my stomach
Like a pancake
Through a gap in the black curtain, we saw the audience of moms and dads
And their lit eyeballs glued to the play in front of them
It was almost our scene but didn't care
Or we pretended not to
We reveled in our defiance and savored our bravery
Our fingers formed howling wolves and bouncing bunnies
in the shadows on the wall
And our laughter was thick and round
I remember it crawled slowly
Slowly like oozing syrup from our stomachs to our throats,
Bubbling, needing to surface
Our bones shook with the suppression of that creature inside of us
Wanting to break us and get us into trouble
To maybe put a dent in the carefully crafted grown-up world of perfection
Of well-behaved girls and boys
Until finally we let it burst like a shaken soda
And it shattered the delicate, icy silence
And we threw our hands over our naughty mouths
because that fear was no longer beautiful
because now it was acrid and real