Left, right, fingers and toes,
climbing up through kitchen drawer
handles— just the daily grind
when you’re only four—

helping bake by eating the quarter
cup of flour given to you, helping
yourself to the dish of butter,
sticky-fingered, when they turn their

backs, so small in a world so big,
fitting on counter tops.
When everything should be scary,
surely someone else must keep you safe.

I know fear better now
that I’m big enough to be in charge
of my own life— now that I scoop my butter
with my knives instead of fingers,

always with these newly shaky hands.
Now, I can’t keep track
of all the doctors who cannot keep
track of whether all these tremors

are endocrinological or neurological,
but I do have a good memory
for all the people who haven’t believed
we’ve the rights to choose the best treatments

for our own lives— unless when dying,
rapidly, if even then. But I just die a little less
slowly than we’re supposed to, when there are
those, like superheroes, with health always frozen

in other peoples’ time. I say good for them.
My superhero bosses me to boss around my
doctors, tells me I’ve a right to be in charge
of my life, and has always prayed

someone to keep me safe when everything gets
scary. No longer my survival, but still sharing cups of
flour, her daily grind. My world, I suppose, is but more
vast than her kitchen now. Am I then still small

enough to rest on life’s countertops— left,
right, fingers and toes? Climbing,
crawling, scooping, dining, shaking,
sticky? Always with these hands.