the story of my mama

• Bev O’Malley

She's gone with the wind

Like my mama... in a storm

Floated away in a paper shoe

On a sunday

March 19, 1972, I believe it was…

I would go down to Chip and Derrie’s Diner with her We would ice skate on the lawn once it froze over and just look up at the great beyond and hum the song she used to sing to me in my crib, like the bittersweet tunes of the spring flute then we'd hold each others hands and scream our anger into the delicate night sky

It was like a dark buttercream with decadent white chocolate sprinkles and a shared longing for those long winters where the magnolias rained down like a wooden rocking horse but once the winter snow melted off of the lawn, we would shed our ice skates and store them in papa's barrel once more that same barrel once loved by many in the copper fields the copper fields that were now as empty as the hole where my mama's body should be

But instead she is coasting the high seas in her paper shoe, waiting to return home