Short stories
My embarrassment created new pathways, new connections to new nerves, and to this day, whenever I trip over a crack in the sidewalk or forget someone’s name, I experience that same feeling of shame, seeping down my jeggings.
When I was three, my mother took me to a Starbucks near our apartment to meet with a graduate student so she could conduct an experiment for her research paper. The memory has distorted over time, but what I remember is what matters.
Since she has become my past, I am now her future. We will pick the skin around our nails until it bleeds, step on a sidewalk crack in the hopes our mother’s back cracks, and point our middle finger to the sky to see if lightning strikes.
Growing up was like the fall,
slow, racing up to something frantic.
I knew the cold was coming,
I did not know how bad it would be.