Old man sweater

It touches my knees even though I’m grown now I still love your shaky handwriting and stories sent bound in cardstock and watercolor. Succulents green on a window sill, loose pebble homes scatter, fill the cracks of teal lazy chairs to sit the New York Times all afternoon. Volvo windows won’t roll down with hot seats stick to the back of my legs and I peel. So we take trips to Ireland, to the city (5th avenue to buy shoes), to the flower power bathroom so pink it makes my head spin. Past the classic white of privilege, too big for this family, I found slabs of slate steps where I see my face thirty years ago in black and white, bubble gum for the yearbook, girl I know sat here.

Your crinkly hands applaud my feet dancing over hooked rugs, performing on a stage christened by many Christmas mornings and even more afternoons I have no pictures of. We can talk about spider veins, Charles Dickens, potato flakes and too much mayonnaise, but now we are silent, still, whiskey tonics drifting up the back of our throats.

Layers of leaves crusty with age I could look for hours behind the brown red barn into the clear trickle of a backyard stream and find families of legless tadpoles float back and forth. I always return to the back of the barn, the chests musky with dust tell stories of three girls, their adolescent escapes of playwrights and darkrooms. After the production for this afternoon, in and out of our arms, instead we read the paper and decide not to talk about the potato flakes.