She Climbs Into My Head (for the 13-Year-Old She) by Mark Anthony Neal

She Climbs Into My Head (for the 13-Year-Old She)by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
it took me years to get it; a lifetime, almost for her.   
We often call her Sophia--recalling the Alice Walker character, brought to cinematic life by Oprah Winfrey.  Objects move when She enters a space, and not quite like the whirring that Toomer evokes with  Karintha -- a poem that I read to both of the Daughters when they were young.
That She knows the power and force of her body is not the point, but that She balances it by spending so much time climbing into her head.  She has been conjuring talking dogs, time-traveling Chicas and History detectives since She was a toddler. I don’t know how much She dreams because She always seems to be awake--alert--even when She sleeps.
Her sister was a boundless physical energy; until we discovered swimming for her. She, now a teen-age She? We can’t keep up with her imagination, and that imagination is most put to use in the name of those who can’t or aren’t allowed to imagine.  As her favorite teacher once remarked,  “your baby-gurl” has a thing for justice.”
I know her sense of justice was born out of her own insecurities.  The sister that She thinks is more popular, more attractive--things of the physical realm.  Where She is not insecure is in her conjuring.  She sees what the world would never expect her to see, perhaps doesn’t want her to see--the language arts teacher at a loss of words when the 12-year-old asked her to defend the use of tracking in her school--and has never met a truth that She didn’t think someone should hear. Did I mention that She moves objects when She enters a space.
Her biggest gift to me is that she seemingly understood from the beginning--sitting there conjuring in her carrier while we sat in the Wolf Road Starbucks where I punched the keys on the old Toshiba that produced two books--seemed to understand even then that her Daddy also loved to climb into his head.  
Daddy don’t move objects like She can, but every so often, She ask to climb inside my head, and we conjure.