if I were enveloped

Thinking of myself from age three-ish to ten
I think of a sort of nothing -
roundish, blank, placid 

memories seem to be spaced quite apart

towards the beginning I plunged
into a frigid hole of water
which, covered with leaves, 
had looked like solid ground
I walked home naked 
hiding behind my mom's legs 
each time a car drove past

in the video from my 5th birthday 
(which I do not remember)
I receive a camel sewn with decorative gems 
and mirrors
when asked by my grandma, plump and fretting,
what is it?
I guess, A cow?
it seems maybe willfully ignorant
a refusal to be here
a power play now second hand
or maybe I was woefully ignorant
a bit dull, and grasping for any answer 
that might suffice 

it’s always a battle for the story I might tell myself:
willfully or woefully

towards the end of my blank time
I sat on a tree stump in my yard
for hours after school
too scared to go inside the empty house
the memory is fuzzy:
either I pooped in the tree stump,
which was hollow on the inside,
(deeply fearing a car might drive by)
or else I thought about doing that
and I felt swallowed up by a shame 
so heavy it compressed me

if I were enveloped in a blanket from a magical land
if the shape of myself was unrecognizable to myself
if the next word from my mouth was soft lambswool
if time was a sloppy looping doodle
-and sometimes it seems it can be-
then I might turn my gaze
full full full
to be that witness I was searching for