for Shira, who asked
Sometimes, I have to remind myself to take a breath when I remember that he is not going to sit down on the couch beside me and ask me how I lived that day. There have been 1,675 days since.
*
If I follow the arc of love back to its beginning,* I arrive in the small linoleum-lined kitchen of my first home, an apartment across from a small park and playground. I believe it was my parents’ who laid the lino but I can’t be sure. In the kitchen, on the Formica countertop, my mother is perfectly spreading I can’t believe it’s not butter right to the edges of wholewheat slices of breads. Cheddar cheese in thick slabs sits on the counter. The pan on the stove is hiss hot. Once there’s butter on both sides of the bread, my mother dabs Marmine, sharp and dark, in paintbrush flecks on the inside. I’m on the couch burning with fever.