The Idea of Inheritance

Zoe Smith

I’m afraid of Lindsborg, Kansas, and pastors because I don’t want to know my grandfather who died four years before my birth, who had my father baptized so that he could go to hell for the unforgivable sin. Their jultomten adorn the windows of my Jewish mother’s new home, their miniature painted eyes peeking from beneath their woolen hats, as if to echo her voice trailing from the kitchen, asking if I like her “Christmas room,” if I was happy to be visiting, if I remembered that the dolls comprise a portion of my survivor’s benefits, of paltry inheritance.

At dinner, her boyfriend complains of tradition and antiquity and pours his family recipe for bourbon eggnog, smudging a tomten’s wooden body with greasy fingers and laughing too loudly. Was I not so glad, he joined my mother in chorus, that I could make it in time for Christmas Eve despite the icy roads? Despite my invitation never having arrived? And in their unfamiliar house, I excuse myself to kneel at the shrine to my patrilineage and wonder what it means to be the last known bearer of a surname that was never legally prescribed in the bastardization of my existence. To “Made in Little Sweden, Product of the U.S.A.” I pray and pray and pray.

“Please don’t be alone on Christmas,” my dear friend begged of me when he departed our heatless apartment for the comfort of his childhood bedroom and I promised I’d abide by the myth of Christmas not of a matter of faith, or of God, but of poetry, of mulling relentlessly over a riddle that has no key.

My Favorite Color

Jordyn Baker

Pink looks like ages six to eight. When my brother said I could not play Tee-ball because it is a boys sport and I swore off the feminine color for two years. The same time I spun off the swings and pink poured from my knees while he laughed at my weak attempts to impress the boys wearing blue. When I wept because I still needed my mother while trying to prove my independenceWhere the band-aid she gave me exuded every shade of the color I tried convinced them was nothing representative of me.

Pink looks like the first time he said that I looked best when I had none in my face. Color-lacked flushed cheeks, hand around my neckLook at how lifeless you can seem. The rose-colored prints left on my body in the shape of weapons, magenta curves to show his fingerprints, The pink that so easily transforms into black and purple and orange until it leaves my body with just the feeling as a reminder it was once there.

Pink is my Sunday School bible, where I first learned what parts of me hold shame.

Pink is birthday cake and icing on a full plate to throw away when no one is looking.

Pink is ripped tights that got caught on a rose bush, they were cheap anyway.

Pink is smudged lipstick on the person who taught me manipulation can share my favorite color.

Pink is the girlhood I hid and the woman I embrace.