This month, we’ve been writing and studying lyrical essays in my writing community, Sustenance. I’ll share some prompts with you all next week, but below is a recent mini-essay of mine on the bruisable nature of memory, stone fruit, and thin-skinned hearts.
Plums
I worry that childhood has been hard on you—in a way that will make it blur together. A smudge instead of a shape. The way spilled water spoils a painting. I worry I won’t be true memory, only disruption. A year where a woman insisted you clean your face and bought you books and practiced your months with you. How she stood in the kitchen, where your mother might have stood, and handed you plums.
You’re not mine. But I wanted you to know what it was like to have a mama in your house— in the hours it mattered. The lonely stretch of afternoon or late at night. When the school mornings came, heavy with terror, I wanted you to wake to a woman stirring in the other room. Her little sounds, a comfort.
I know you have a mother. A real one. And at times, I felt almost real too. How rabid I was when she forgot to call you on birthdays and Christmas in New York. How you adored her in spite of it.
Your father and I used to fight about you. We’d fight because we both loved you. His love was biological. Mine was something else—an ache without permission.
The truth is, I almost stayed. I needed to make sure you didn’t get cavities and that you remembered that January followed December. That you went to school and talked to Meg and brought the class valentines.
Your papa is dating someone new now and I have questions. Does she read to you? Does she fix your collar and fight with your father about your screen time? Does she stand in the kitchen and offer you fruit? Maybe she knows a secret I didn’t. Maybe she can test a plum for softness without leaving a bruise.
*Special thanks to SEJAL SHAH who inspired this essay, with hers “Thank you,” which appeared in Brevity Journal.
Interested in joining Sustenance?
My online writing community, Sustenance, is currently a quarterly commitment but is switching to a 6-month commitment next week. If you join in the next 48 hours, you’ll be grandfathered at the quarterly rate. Sign up here.
This one cracks me wide open, particularly the ending. Thank you for articulating what it's like to mother someone else's child: an ache without permission.
What a beautiful piece of work and memory.