I was a real cute kid. Ask anybody. My father likes to tell a story about a modeling scout who spotted us out midday shopping at the Briarwood Mall. Imagine five-year-old me, all sailor stripes & junior afro, doing a full pull-up on the magazine kiosk: Got any Keats? No doubt something I'd heard watching Jeopardy with granny, but it mattered not to the tickled pink lady. Oh, you're just soooo sweet! What a cutie-sweet! she decreed, handing dad her flowery card. It wouldn't stop there. My 10th birthday, whole neighborhood invited, I strutted down the stairs in a white sports coat like, Look, folks. In case you're wondering, I'm the host! My mother told Mrs. Holbrook He was born full-grown with a briefcase. As I'm sure you will be, little sewn seed, undone. Future me. Dear son, the defacing starts much later. After desegregation sparks the awkward clutch of Coach clutches on campus busses, but before the riots in Baltimore. It started a few days before I turned thirty, Invisibility. Home from teaching the sons & daughters of Indiana farm hands it's ok to write poems, same briefcase slung tired across wrinkled linen, you'd have thought I accosted her—Maria—when I stooped down to pluck my mother a pair of magenta tulips from her own thriving garden, & she shrieked Why are you staring at my lawn! Maria who used to slide teen-me a twenty to occupy her daughter in the playpen while she grabbed a bottle of Bordeaux from the basement before the real nanny arrived. She must have seen straight through me, into the distant past, alternate reality when your grandparents' neighboring residence would have been a servants', & I in that moment, for the first time, unsaw her. As primer. A kind of manila cardstock I'd failed to imprint. Son, sometimes this happens. It happens in gated spaces when you look like a lock pick. See the 44th president. Scratch that. It happens in gated spaces, as the lone locksmith. & if I'm being honest, the happy way things are going between me & E., you may well resemble him. Don't count yourself precious. Truth is, too soon, you will bend down to rob a few bright blossoms from your own land & look away from the earth to make certain you haven't been ogled. This phantom guilt applied to a nape through the eyes of every blind Maria, here's the key: try not to let it die. Now run to the closest mirror, quickly remember how sweet the fleeting love. Copyright © 2017 Marcus Wicker. Used with permission of the author. |
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