Lillian's Light

Memories, like Jell-O, shake, fall off the Spanish chandelier all she left me, my father’s mother, once she died, it hangs there from the ceiling in our dining room, ceramic flowers pink and blue and yellow like a child’s toy giving light with open arms spraying light and then she is stooped under it gnarled painful back, humped spreading tuna salad on rye toast heaping canned fruit bits, cherries redder than an oil painting, squares of pineapple so perfect a geometry teacher would marry them on my plate and I wipe treacly juice from my small mouth pounce from the table catch my elfin reflection in that lucid bough hanging over her table alive with possibilities I could not perceive before I escaped to my Florida friends

Marco Polo Marco Polo

before I could scurry from dry cold old-smelling air into a humid embrace like a mink stole saddling sunburned shoulders she kisses my freckled cheeks, in her hands like a vise tightening waiting sides leaving me lipstick smudged, plastic smelling Hollywood Red, Uptown Red, Marilyn Red Radiant Red, Royal Red, Ravishing Red, Really Red, Truly Red, Russian Red, West End Red, Silent Red, Burnt Red, Flame Red, Hot Red, Red Licorice, Red Ribbon, Red Devil, Red Fox, No Question Red, Deep Cut Red, Riot Red Fatal Red, Midnight Red, Velvet Red, Drop Dead Red Classic Red rubbed off with thumb and spit. Cleaning a hanging light is treacherous. So many reflections lie beneath the dust. In the breeze they make no sound.