I looked into the full length mirror and I saw a princess in white looking back at me.

My mind is still a tornado of ideas, new powers, costumes, secret identities.

Up and down we go, up and down. I swim powerfully, a mer-boy moving majestically through the dark water towards the light.

Ruth stomped into the room, holding a Barbie doll by her blond hair and a pair of stone-washed Barbie jeans. “Luke, I can’t get Catherine’s jeans on—her legs are too sticky.”

We didn’t have a dog, but my sister had a duck—a little awkward thing—bright yellow with a large bill the exact shade of dried mustard.

A foreword and a memory. A reckoning and a rebirth.

The red ball is solid but gives when I squeeze it. It needs air.

“Now that’s a fine looking horse, yessiree! Look there, Luke! A genuine Arabian stallion!"