Oh Me Oh My Oh
Materialized by Amelia K. on Thursday, June 20th 2024.
A little girl says, I want to see the whale.
The what? Says her aunt who doesn’t share her blood, just her love.
The whale. In the yard. Where the water is.
The girl is 850 miles from where she was born. Nothing good comes out of Florida, certainly not something born in the dark. Now there’s a chance for her. Might one day be Miss Ohio. Miss Kentucky. Miss West Virginia. Little Miss Christian Tri-State Appalachia Americana. Little Miss First of eight children, fist full of flags and scriptures. Little Miss not quite Tupelo honey, Little Miss Sweet on the Eyes. Except she isn’t.
Queens of corn and flies, her mama says, when she’s 10, 11, 12. You don’t need those crowns. The teacher who overhears her mention prom, when she’s 14, 15, 16: Amelia, you might not get asked to prom, but that doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful on the inside. Inner beauty is what matters. You just remember that. Of course I do. I wear it. I am it. Queen of what I’m not. Empress of lack. Look how heavy my head is. Lonely eyes huge against the trailer window, midnight vows: someday I will write myself out of this. And here I am writing myself back. I was lighter then, carried easily through the night.
In the girl’s first snow—nearly 2 feet—her grandpa held her in a white blanket. What is this? she asks, flipping through her baby book. The photo frightens her. It looks as though something has been excised.
That’s you. Your hair. In the photo he appears to be holding a black hole, or nothing at all, a neatly poised emptiness.
The girl leads them outside. The mama and her big moon belly, red with girl. The aunt and her perfect sitcom laugh. Oh my stars, she says.
She means well, says her mama.
Don’t she always. You just remember that.
Amelia K. lives in Georgia. Her birthday is 24 days after Samuel Beckett's death day. Her dad calls her Wolf and her mom calls her Little A.
Other stars in the Errants asterism:
Nothing Buried Won’t Reveal
A.A. Balaskovits
When Mary's swollen belly produced a stone, we wept with her and submerged it underways, so none of us would have to look at it again.
Reconciliation
Satya Dash
Night after night, I find music in the elegance of sine waves coursing their choral prelude across the display.
The Destination
Heather Kamins
I woke to an empty bed and walked outside to find him staring at the sky. “Are we on the moon?” he asked as I came up beside him.
The Last Library
Joshua Jones Lofflin
He sometimes finds the tops of poles spiking up from the earth, their cracked insulators bleached white like knuckle bones. He marks them on his map. He marks the map again when they disappear.
On Your Twenty-Sixth Birthday, You Receive Twenty-Six Instructions:
Erika Walsh
There should be fairies looking for you. Tie a red ribbon to your bed when you are ready to talk to them.
Late Afternoon, National Gallery
Grace Zhu
