a plastic penguin in one chubby fist 
a plastic dolphin in the other

i’m gonna be everything 
she says to the penguin
everything

i'm    going     to      be 
E  V  E  R  Y 
THING

i know what I’m going to be
she turns to the dolphin 
everything
 
i try to remember back 
to when I had that primal conviction

a thin cognition
in a blue bathing suit 
squinting into the sun

and wonder the ways 
in which the intervening 36 years 
will whittle my daughter 

down to the exact approximation 
of her grown self

the tortuous route by which 
she will be shaved into a woman