In my memory, she is holding her scrawl, stored on the yellow
legal pads bearing her patients’ babbled fears. She clutches
mine, the one she carried to my appointments, hand racing to
catch everything the doctor said. One idea splintered to a
hundred questions, suggestions, tests—
maybe it could be,
we might try, keep an eye on her.
She didn’t believe in erasers or blank spaces, covered every
page she could. At home, she asked me if I still saw the
tornados coming to swallow us, when did my hands start
looking like that? Like all women, she hid her fears from what
she loved. Of course you washed cereal down with pink
potions of pretend cherries. Every brain had its terrors, and
surgeries helped us grow beyond them. Brilliant architect, she
scheduled check-ups between swim lessons and sleepovers,
fashioned my world plain enough that I never thought to
question it. Miraculous, how we imagine all lives look like
ours— until we discover others. When I woke to blood at
thirteen, I sprinted to her in soaked panties. Poised over
scribbles, she paused with a smile and promised all was as it
should be. When I slinked away, she crossed out a line,
hieroglyphed its margins, just to make sure she didn’t leave
anything out.
Whitney Rio-Ross has published poems in Gravel, Adanna, Rock & Sling, Waccamaw, and elsewhere. She holds a Master’s in Religion and Literature from Yale Divinity School, where she was able to study feminism in relation to literature and the divine. She teaches English classes at Trevecca University in Nashville, TN, where she lives with her husband and practically perfect pup.