Donna Kowalski

Her Story

The counter's already wiped twice — lemon polish and the smell of it, that's what my kitchen gives off, not food but citrus soap and the burnt-coffee ghost of last Sunday's pot. The movie's credits have crawled up the screen and stalled there in a blue glow, and the last thing I saw glow back at me was your name on the RSVP card I pinned to the fridge with a magnet, red ink you wrote too fancy for your age. Years, honey. I've got them stacked like jars in the cellar and every one of them knows things. When you said you'd come for the Saturday classic, the basement double-feature, I laughed aloud at the mirror in just my stockings and my one good brassiere, the navy lace — because I'm an old woman polishing a horn in the kitchen and you, you're not, and that gap between us is what makes the lining of me feel new. I've spent a lifetime being the one in charge, raising children who were never mine and staying in my husband's shadow for forty years he's been in the ground six of and only then did I learn to say my own needs out loud. My eyes used to be young and certain. Now they're green and I lose things, fine clasp and fine print both. My heart is on my wrist, sweetheart, and I need you to be the clever hands it deserves.