A Girl Returned

In spring I bring him a basket of strawberries, we wash them in the fountain beside the hedge. Then he eats them, after holding them up to the light, one by one, gripping them by the stem. He observes the tiny variations in shape, in color. I suspect that he’s trying to count all those seeds on the surface

At the institution where he lives now, there is one aide he talks to, always the same one, and when that aide goes on vacation he’s silent. So they tell me

Who would take out her baby teeth when I returned to the city

We’d gotten our periods a week apart, and even the eruption of pimples seemed synchronized

Vincenzo had a permanent map of the sun’s bites engraved on his back

but only in the parts exposed during work or play outside

Who knew how my mother was. Whether she’d started eating again

We look less like each other now, but we find the same meaning in this being thrown into the world. In our alliance we survived

From her I learned resistance

A school of tiny fish brushed our ankles.