I wonder where the time has gone: when I wore crushed velvet dresses and ribbons in my hair. I remember the sweetness of frosting on my lips and the itch of breadcrumbs in my skirt at the children’s table. The timid patience for the magic words of prayer to escape some adult’s mouth that we could begin eating (as if we had not picked lightly at our plates already).
Is that so long ago? I have been returning every year to my childhood placemat and yet I feel as if those moments were stolen from me too young. A handful of these memories, if not most, are tainted with the drunken murmurs of politics, petty arguments, and divorces. This table is not quite as full, with less laughter and bodies. The smiles are vacant here too.
Even my appearance, once frail and petite, has thawed into a woman’s body. My legs boast the strength to bear children but the men miss the twiggy limbs of my youth. Anymore, the bearded faces that smothered my cheeks with burns and kisses have been shaved. Some buried. The dresses now are too small, the laced edges ripped from poorly fitted heels and their busts are filled, no, they are spilling with flesh and with found love. The garments are no longer fit to wear. I am not their little girl any longer.
The men who I thought swore to protect me have made themselves scarce. In my lifetime they broke the unspoken vow. Their children, missing, run off, married, high over the moon—their wives divorced and living peaceable lives. They let them run and they did not chase. not even the ones who stood still, like me, begging pathetically for an ounce of attention and recognition of where it all went wrong.
But their memories are running dry and hearts are leathery, cracked and crumbling. I tire of their forgetfulness in conversation but deeper I mourn the wit and charm that I admired as a girl. now I am the one with the quips, remarks that uproar the room. I find now that the jest is never becoming of the glory I appraised. A woman should not have to boast the guffaws and groans but yet I am signing myself to the role of a wise fool. So I drink the same wine as the women who stayed, and savor the sting of tannins rushing down my throat. I go and return home to a place where they have no power and no control on the emotions I feel, and I sob so hard I bray like an ass.
The people who stayed I would not choose and did not choose me. That I know. The ones who left did not choose me and I still chose them, on my knees and praying for a glance of pity. Their loyalties are vague and changing and like battleground lines in the sand, shifting with the wind. I stand still and others move around me but I have never shifted. Still, I stay the little girl who begs you to stay and listen one more time.
I have changed with only the small voice left deep inside reminding me of that sweet frosting, warm glow of familiarity. The taste is bitter yet.
Claire Elise Baker is an Indiana native whose family comes from the hollers in Tennessee and Kentucky. As a first-generation college student, her poetry explores the disconnect between rural and urban spaces, as well as the diaspora of Appalachian folks who moved north into the Rust Belt region. Her appreciation of occult legend and folklore stems from the stories of her grandfather, Winford Henry, who was born and raised in Cocke County, Tennessee.
**Featured image: Gerd Altmann, geralt – Pixabay, altered