Four Years Old

[ellajam]

Lovely edit. My only concern is the first 2 lines of S3, "would" bothers me, and you haven't made a space in the poem for the brother before this so I have no idea why the mother reacts so, maybe the narrator doesn't know either, so I can live with that but still don't like "would". So I'm left first with

When my brother leaves
my mom does the dishes in silence. (play on leaves for the next lines, ha)

Or

In the empty space my brother leaves... (does it matter where he went?)

Almost there.

I remember the afternoons and the light.
The white wardrobe would play
hide-and-seek with me as I climbed
in and out. My water-filled baton
spun me until I felt weightless
as the purple glitter inside.

The concrete jungle-gym
would hold me on its shoulders
and show me a playground
peopled as after the rapture.

My brother would go away
to school and mom would do dishes in silence.
She was a tree whose leaves were green
only at the very top.

---

Original version:

I remember the afternoons and the light
of my favorite things –
my white wardrobe that would play
hide-and-seek with me as I climbed
in and out, and my water-filled baton
that made me weightless
as the purple glitter inside.
I'd fixate on it for five
minutes or an hour, maybe.

I'd watch Sesame Street,
Mr. Rodger's Neighborhood.
Sesame Street was fun,
Mr. Rodger was company.

My brother would go away
each day to school and my mom
would do dishes in silence.
She was an inaccessibility,
a tree whose leaves were green
only at the very top.