just a little girl

probably when i turned six, my mom held a birthday party for me. we invited friends, i wore a yellow dress with a poppy flower on it and a yellow hat. my friends from school came, one dressed up as a mermaid, another as a hula girl, but my friend david didn’t dress up, he wore blue shorts and a blue striped shirt and a hat. my mom cut swirly shapes out of a magazine, probably it was last year’s JC penny catalog and held a scavenger hunt in the backyard. back in the dining room we decorated brown paper bags with stickers and markers. outside i had a balloon. everyone went home but there was still a swirly magazine cut-out left in the tree by where the hammock used to hang. no one had found it.