In her green brocade robe, she makes notes on the kitchen
calendar.  Her tiny, upright writing looks like Einstein’s.   

She plays peek-a-boo with my two-year-old
as he chortles in his high chair.    

“Don’t ever smoke,” she tells me, tapping ashes
into the ceramic dish I made for her in Girl Scouts.   

I never hide in her closet or peek into
her jewelry box.    

My son wheels his trike around her patio, chasing
the soap bubbles she blows.   

When she reads me the story about the possom
at the bottom of the barrel, we both laugh.

Standing at the stove over a steaming kettle, she stirs
strips of wool she’ll hook into rugs.  

In her lingerie drawer, she keeps a soup can label, brown-haired woman,
smiling.  “You’re as pretty as she is,” I’d said.

            For Roberta Wilson Gilkison Falk