all my life
Later I draw my own left hand.
Open. Closed. Making a fist.
Holding a glass.

I wanted to reassure him,
to tell him what a difference he had made
but did not know how to phrase it.
Never so good at words in these situations
And lately as we spent more time together it was clear
that there was an element in our relationship
of Sid the parent; I the child.
I wanted to change this
but did not know how.
Joy said: "When I was growing up I slept in a little room on the top floor. The window in that room looks down over the houses on the hillside. Down to the straits and across the top of the Bay. I used to imagine that if I had wings I could fly right out the window, across the Bay and up the coast to the woods near Mendocino where sometimes we went for vacation. She stopped talking suddenly. "I'm talking too much."
about this work | begin again | Dorothy Abrona McCrae | Judy Malloy |