may 1

We’re still trying to escape the lion’s breath. Hot air on the back of our necks, damp and clouded. Getting away was the hard part. Coming through cold, harsh waters to emerge into the cool air, the sun rising behind silhouetted buildings and trees. It’s a solitary journey, it’s different on the inside. Building a new life, moving into a clapboard house on the escarpment. The house needed a new life too. Fresh paint, ripping up carpet to reveal dusty curving hardwood floors, scraping the dirt off of grey windowsills. My mother standing over the sink, eating a tuna fish sandwich, paint flecked sweatpants. The marks of progress. Pictures of our faces put in glass frames on the wall, our old furniture settling into new corners. Fog clinging around the house, I always think of that time in terms of mornings. Walking hunched and lonely to school, cars growling by while I walked steadily through dark grey mist, footsteps on wet pavement, hands in my pockets. I always forgot gloves. That was when dinnertime forgot it’s name, eating meals after ten o’clock, eating frozen food. Nothing like in my childhood of homemade, wholesome family time. Mashed potatoes, pork tenderloin, corn on the cob. My mother moved up steadily, from minimum waged part-time jobs with managers ten years younger than she was, to better work environments and staggered hours, to better bosses and steady hours. The work clothes she hated, pin-striped pants and turtle necks, cardigans and trousers. I would make dinner so that it was ready the moment she walked in the door. But the hot wind lingers and blows through cracks and crevices in the wall. Overturned lamps, broken-down stovetops and leaky eaves troughs.