I know the way my kitchen floors creak and bend with my barefeet at night in the dark,
and the pause after a sigh, when my mother wants to say something else, but will not let herself.
I know where the key is kept, by the front door of my best friend’s house,
and the way she knocks her ankles together, unsteady, when she is ice skating.
I know the weight of a boy’s arm around my shoulder, 
shaking with the laughter coming from somewhere inside his strangely hollow chest, 
and I know the cold air and numb fingers of the December dark, when
the night hangs onto the rising sun with purple, bruising fingernails.

I know the middle seat on long car rides, because the smallest always gets the middle,
but I also know the smallest gets shoulders to sleep on,
so I do not mind so much, when I fall asleep to rustling pages and the hush of talk radio.

I know my heart exploding in my stomach when I am nervous to speak, and the hot shaking of my hands when no one is listening to what I am not telling them.
I know the protests of a sleeping big brother, when I throw myself into his blankets, knocking elbows against shoulder blades,
the wagging tail of a spotted dog,
and the clicking of his feet against the porch when he sees me in the late afternoon.
I know that coffee tastes like tinfoil, pursed lips, and rushed mornings,
and hot cocoa tastes like sledding, and red ears,
and the metallic inside of the teakettle.

I know two birthday cakes, and two brown eyes, and one twin brother
with sticky-up hair,
a little boy blowing out candles across from me, for every year of my life.
I know secrets and soccer nets are things I am not good at keeping,
sleeping on the couch when it is raining at night,
and the way the dark of the living room is warm around my shoulders.

I know the way my father changes the words of songs
on the radio to be about our cats,
and that the waves and the sun of the ocean leave
my hair knotted, and my shoulders red.
I know the tune my mother sings my name to,
when she hears me padding down the stairs,
and I know the soft press of a sharpened pencil against lined paper
in the dull light of early morning.