Sparkling and clear, like a freshly polished wine glass, is the memory of you. Both of you. The vitality, the attentiveness, clung to me like a snug Velcro band. It wasn’t parental or serious—it was fun, different. Your looks, your play with me glances, felt magical, like tasting cotton candy for the first time. It was always like that, even when the rains of seasons left behind metallic rust. I knew. I saw beyond. To that time of yes’s and up-to-lates.
In my dream, you came back, a barnacle of what you once were. Once an eclipsing moon, now reduced to the size of a pea at my fingertip. You eked out the faintest sigh, and I felt your spirit sizzle away like a genie from a golden, squat tea kettle. It wasn’t help—not exactly—that would have been too noticeable. And that kind of attention was dangerous.
We shared a knowing, you and I, in secret, beneath their gaze. Like the underground railroad, like the resistance papers in France, where being caught meant death. But weren’t you already dead?
Whittled from a behemoth redwood down to the teeniest toothpick, all that remained was a ghostly wisp of fear. Still, I had hope to give you. Just one small action, written on the back of a receipt. A prescription.
I don’t think you believed me—that there could be hope. But your eyes softened, melting like ice cream left too long in a hot car. You dripped. The hopelessness you’d unknowingly fed loosened its grip. You stood, and we met each other’s gaze like fellow soldiers. You had your orders.
And even as the black window hissed her pollutionary bait your way, the bubble’s protection had already been cast. Now take my hand, I said. We will fight this fight together.
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 