How

Bright sunlight and the last ravenous chapters of a book, I sit on the veranda and let my skin sizzle. The halter straps of my bikini folded down around my back, I don't realize till later I am a replica of my mother in the late 1980's. Cheek to shoulder, my skin is not the youthful plump expanse of softness it once was; we fight the inevitable demise of our bodies by maximizing sun exposure, by painting our bodies that fresh, golden color as far as our modesty allows. While I ran around the sea shore, picking shells and excavating ecosystems, my 35-year-old mother would sit, just like this, staring at the sun patiently until there was none left to be had. My chest freckles now like hers did then. We will never be 15 again.

The thing is, writing words is the only way I could ever make sense of this world, of what it is to be alive in it. I said once I'd sacrifice my unborn children for it, and the years that have passed since then haven't quite managed to wash the reality of such a thought from my veins. The proximity of Real Jobs, of normal lives and steady incomes, of proper housing and vacation plans for the coming year, may have made them less threatening, more imaginable. But they carry no less the scent of defeat than they did before. I am not ready to give up.

I guess I know by now,
that we will meet again,
Somehow.