Stories related to childhood

Dad’s gone again. In a rage, Mom tears up his photo. But then we try to put the pieces back together, afraid that he might never come back.

“The floor is lava!” the boys cheer, leaping on couches. A single smirk; a spell softly spoken. Child-bearing chairs ooze into the eruption.

Pearl in a boy’s hand, unable to let go of that part of her that rolled towards him, a woman, who one day will forget her broken necklace.

My mom and I sing that song, “Something in the Way She Moves,” in broken English. She teaches me about The Beatles: “Besouro like our car.”

Mom takes me shopping for plant stuff. “You want to know,” she says, shaking a packet of seeds. “That’s what your father looked like.”

Her fifth birthday, she’d had cancer most of her short life yet she was joyous. Her parents took her tears, shed them behind closed doors.