Flip-book, Memory Edition by Nancy Schatz Alton

I am leaning across the fence.

You are backing away.

You stitch tank tops.

I stitch longing

while remembering need:

Your need for me

gathered in a flip book

baby-toddler-preschooler

—stop—

stop freeze.

I am leaning across the fence.

You wear stripes, like me.

Your hair, long & thick, not like me.

You flip your hair over my head.

We laugh.

I look good in your hair.

We are a flip book.

You move away, I lean in.

I step back: freeze.

Listen to the way the chain-link fence reverberates.

The sound of silence is not silence, but longing:

Metal against scuffed shoe. I remember & it echoes.

6.14.2018