At six weeks old she is a wisp of a being who collapses against me in total repose before she finishes most bottles.
Dented and dirty, it rolled right out of my façade of middle-classness.
The sky was gray; the thunder rumbling quietly, as if it knew, like it was mourning too.
I drove with anxious anticipation, little flutters keeping me present in my body.
A fantasy turned nightmare. Ripped tights, blood on gravel – a sacrifice.
As you guide the lane line roller around the diving well, the grit behind your eyes clicks.
Every Wednesday in winter, when there was hardly anyone else there, I went down to the beach and read until sunset.
My name is YaYa. I’m sitting here in the corner of my daughter’s home, surrounded by toddlers and their parents.
The micro-spikes I’ve strapped to the bottom of my trail runners make me feel confident.
I remind you of my generational trauma as you carry another box to the moving truck, but you don’t respond.
One summer, we sat on the stoop in front of my best friend’s building and her mother taught us to crochet.
Aunt Celestina carefully packaged party gifts for the kids in red-and-white polka-dot boxes she’d bought at the Dollar Store.
There’s an intruder in my kitchen.
I love music but I don’t dance. The rare times I’m asked I politely decline, but this guy was especially insistent.
We tramp around the lily pad-filled lake, eavesdropping on conversation fragments.
“Excuse me.” A man wanted to sit on my aisle seat.
On line at ShopRite, the plump woman behind me, lifting a package of pickled beets from my cart, asks “Are these any good?”
“Daddy, twirl!” our five-year-old daughter squeals the first time she sees them wearing a dress.
“Five minutes remaining!” is the shout of my coach as the workout hits the home stretch.
She is like a rosebush in her long dress of bold pink and red flowers.