Token bruise

In the weeks after it happened, they came.

I remember the way they looked... how soft and unusual they were, and the way they quietly appeared, mysterious strangers who did not call ahead.

They were pretty, and I found myself staring at them as if trying to make their acquaintance -
small, coffee-colored, mirror-like.
Satellites to each other, symmetrically hovering just below waist, just above hip arches.

Tender to the touch.

It was days before I realized that they were from thumbs.

Fear.

Fear. 
It is Red Rover  
and the one whose doubt fills her as she watches herself
run across the field toward the wall of clasped fists and forearms.

Their faces blur. Shoulders go soft-focus, until only an impenetrable wall of limbs, 

bony and tensile, are in view

and what shifts hardest into focus is the understanding that they all serve the same purpose.

Stop her. 

And what is not in focus, as she heaves toward them, is that they are her.