Prose Poem...This one's for my mom entitled: Photograph of my Mother, age seven

Photograph of My Mother, age seven

She’s so good at dancing, so good that we drew her into the ivory stained border of the photograph with all girls in it that looked like me.  Me and my sister, we drew her in; and on the little body with the crooked arms holding up first position sat a thirty-nine year old face with thickly pressed-on caramel highlights growing out of the scalp and eyes so big it hurt to look for too long.  We made her look full-chested and strong with little legs, little leathered slippers hanging in point, pushing the photograph down, stabilizing top to bottom like clothes-pins.  But she wasn’t clothes pins; she was a big head with hair that fell in points at shoulders that held up little arms that could do barely anything on their own—only raise upwards into first position.  We put her head on there because moms, well, they were never born.  They were moms, and they didn’t wear leotards and they didn’t dance with the other little girls. 

She’s so good at dancing so we drew her onto the girl that looked like me, the little girl in the photograph that Nana stared at as she told me I was going to grow up to be great.  And somehow we knew it was she, the one with the crooked left arm, the arm that practically blocked one eye.  We knew because

when I was young my mom told me I’d dance.  As much as I hate the way my toes can’t touch the sky, the way my arms won’t do anything unless someone else holds them straight, she wanted me to tip toe and stretch—arms raising a border that wasn’t there before I made my own dancing picture.  When I was young, my mom told me she had been young once too, young and small and a bit uneven—even to the point of loose arms and sideways pointing toes.  And when I danced, they framed me too.  I’ll never remember the things they now say, though I tend feign remembrance when they say I pushed the other girls away from my flailing arms and awkwardly shaped toe points.

 I don’t remember the dance.  I remember readying my toes and my arms in a stretch so tall that when my mom smeared rosy lipstick onto my fat, child’s cheeks, I didn’t need the dance to remember why we took dancing pictures.  But we took them and we wore pink all over our cheeks.