An enigmatic compliment for an imaginative child:
She’ll be beating the boys away with a stick
and visions of bear-baiting dance in her head
because the words feel more like the pointed jabs
than does she feel on the offensive,
like the bear asked to be tortured
by allowing itself to be baited. Thank you?

Another to shoot in the dark what was expected in reply:
A minister at church saying,
I wish I had been the one to baptize you
and ritual and communal become too familiar.
As the family of God feels more like tepid bathwater,
the compliment plunges her in imagination
and laps at her skin like incest. Thank you?

Another: a boy inviting her inside his apartment
on her birthday and he made her a cake
it would be rude not to eat and a card that reads,
If you were an ocean I would be drowning.
On her birthday it feels more like suffocating
so she opens up and takes the cake,
takes the compliment like a woman. Thank you.