At the CNE, August 1963
- Boats and cars and televisions
- drills and dolls and dryers.
- Vegetable slicers that slivered
- onions and radishes
- so thin we could almost
- see through them. Sample cups
- of spring green peas
- and a new breakfast cereal
- a rainbow of sweet puffy Os.
- People snatched up booklets and brochures.
- I held the glossy paper to my face
- inhaled the fresh-ink smell
- of possibility.
- A skinny doll in a zebra-striped bathing suit
- I might one day play with. A high up bed
- with a desk underneath where I might one day
- sleep and do homework. A silver-streaked
- red car I might one day drive
- its taillights like cat’s eyes.
- A sea of gawking humanity
- jostling bumping knocking together
- like molecules heating up.
- Suddenly
- my forearm
- the soft part
- stung. A bee?
- Beside me
- my mother
- raised her cigarette
- to her lips. No smoke
- curled from its end.
- Where my skin had met
- the once red-hot
- tip
- a blister
- was already forming.
- Sorry, I said.
- Back then I was always sorry.
- For biting my nails.
- For having a stomach ache.
- For wanting what I couldn’t have.
- For not being the child my mother could have loved.
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