Category: 100 Words

Day 25: Seventeen

My best friend got a black Mustang convertible for her seventeenth birthday.

“Mustang Sally,” my dad called her from then on. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen up close. I wanted to touch her impossibly smooth cheek, twist her curly coffee-colored hair between my fingers. She’d pick me up and we’d go for ice cream, the movies, or the diner; we’d come home stinking of cigarettes even though we’d ride with the top down all the way.

The radio played Skid Row or Sting, and she’d sing off-key, her one endearing imperfection, crooked notes trailing behind us.

Day 24: Funeral

“Let’s get out of here, huh? I need some air,” Sean says as he brushes by me, loosening his tie.

“But …” I gesture to the living room full of people dressed in black, eating finger food and cookies. He’s already halfway through the kitchen, on his way to the back door. I catch up in time to see him trade his beer bottle for a set of keys. He tosses them to me.

“You’re driving.”

He leads us to his pickup, and I don’t argue. We’re seventeen again, climbing into the cab, hearing her engine purr, leaving the world behind.

Day 23: Madalyn

My mother’s mother was the oldest of four sisters. She was a mean card player and ate popcorn and candy bars for dinner. She never told me she loved me, but wept as we drove to the airport.

She called me “sis” when she wanted to get my attention. “Sis, either pay attention or don’t play,” when I’d goof off at Rummy. “You’re tracking sand in here, sis,” when I didn’t rinse off my feet from the beach. And our last phone call, when I told her I’d gotten engaged. “Don’t get married, sis.” A cough. “Men aren’t worth it.”

Day 22: Fitting

Sara’s hands glide across the tops of my shoulders and tug the fabric of the sleeves. Juliet’s Nurse’s dress does fit better now that she’s altered it to accommodate my long arms.

“That feel okay?” she asks around the pins she holds between her lips. Her brown eyes study the bodice, the waist, the cuffs, while I study the downy hair at the back of her neck that didn’t make it into her ponytail.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” I whisper, then clear my throat. “Fine.”

I’m weightless as she turns me, my thighs heating, praying she’ll find something else to fix.

Day 21: Bridge

A friend of mine died of cancer in November. She lived in my chat apps; we shared texts, photos, and voice memos, but never met in person.

This morning, a video popped up on TikTok of a girl playing bass along to Duran Duran’s “Rio.” After a ten second debate with myself, I sent the link to my dead friend. It was a tiny celebration, the easy, ecstatic talent of the girl playing a song we both loved.

Twelve-year-old me sang along to MTV, alone in the basement; almost forty years later, the song dances across the river to her.

Day 20: Descent

In basic training
We were taught how to shoot,
How to march,
And how to fall asleep anywhere.
For the shooting, you need a gun.
For the marching, boots.
For the falling asleep, you need a letting go,
Which lives only behind your eyes,
In a canoe on a lake, flightless and floating.
Both the unknotting of joints and the uncoiling of ligaments
Ride in the hull, along with
The unhooking of the tongue that allows
Heat to slip down your throat.
Unlace, unclasp, unbind, unravel.
Dip the shoulder of the paddle
Into the lake of sleep
Ten weeks across.

Day 19: At Eighty

One of my favorite things to do is drive grandmothers around.

They’re not my grandmothers, of course, who are both long gone. But they are someone’s.

I open the passenger door for them, though they fuss at me not to. I turn on the heated seats and I help with the seatbelt, which can be cranky. I drive slowly, giving us room.

Questions I’d like to ask are: Who loved you most? Who did you love most? Who did you wish to love that you couldn’t?

I don’t ask, of course. But somewhere, lodged underneath their words, are the answers.

Day 18: Teacher

My first grade teacher had blonde hair in the front and brown in the back, with a middle part and Farrah wings. She often wore brown plaid bell-bottoms and a cream-colored blouse.

She chose me as her helper, clapping erasers or distributing papers. I was a good reader and listener, but, looking back, I suspect she could see how desperately I needed to please adults.

She’s likely gone now. A Google search returned nothing, since I don’t remember her first name. I’m thinking of her today, appreciating her and the dozen other women who raised me outside of my home.

Day 17: Key

My dad’s construction crew finished work on the new house behind the mall. I know where he keeps the keys.

I didn’t tell the guys, because they’d be all over me, wanting to party there, bring girls, hang out after practice, whatever. But Jordan, my girlfriend, I trust. Tonight, she’s “babysitting,” and I’m “playing Madden at Brody’s.”

We lay in front of the empty fireplace, on the blanket from the pickup. It’s scratchy and smells like turf and dog, but Jordan said she doesn’t mind. It’s warm, anyway. Still, my hand shakes, tracing the sweat and moonlight on her shoulder.

Day 16: Holly, Jolly

There is nothing quite as deflating as the blankness of a room after Christmas decorations have been taken down. The empty tree stand left outside on the patio, the half-wall stacked with folded laundry instead of hanging with stockings, the pile of wrapping paper rolls balanced on the monstrous blue plastic tote to be returned to the basement. It’s insulting, really, to spend an evening with no twinkling lights, to open a door with no wreath, to stand at a kitchen counter with no cookies. I put the stray cut of ribbon, almost eaten by the vacuum, into my pocket.