Alyson

It snuck past me, too, so don’t feel bad. In the past, when I didn’t say something, was not that I was afraid of what you might think, or that I was unsure, it was that I knew what you would think. But I didn’t know this time. This is the only time that I don’t know, and no amount of velvet pillows and cinnamon air can dissolve the discomfort that brings.

She talks like an embroidered decorative pillow that was once your grandmother’s, whose fine needlework you have just begun to notice by looking at it intently for the first time. Her mind works more like a Costco display cake. Four years old and I thought I could walk over to the cake’s podium and swipe a frosting flower right off the top, it was just sitting there. I was four years old, and didn’t see the glass case.

17 years old and I can see the glass case but I can’t crack it and I don’t know this time. The cake is always the cake. Duh. Is the icing even real? Can’t tell and never will: that glass case again. I can try.

I told her that an alarm goes off when my thighs touch. I explained that it was OK right now, since I was sitting on a couch. But not at other times. My hand seethed from pounding the case, but one of the frosting flowers dipped into the face of the cake. I can’t say I left knowing what she thought, but I was back in the world of knowing, scooting away from the cake. ♦