The Kissing Hand
www.wayfaremagazine.org
Mom stains her lips brown and tucks a kiss into my pocket palm. I clutch the waxy smudge through drop-off, carpet naps, playground dodge, ambush, and tap “you’re it.” During sticky spills, scraped skin, tugged twists, and scabbed itch, I peek the kiss safe inside my chubby starfish fist. Sometime between jam bites and sandy box, the smudge saunters off, plays hide and seek so good I crown her lost. Panic crawls across plump cheeks. Tears tumble, then freeze. In the mirror, brown lips stare back at me. There’s mom’s sloped nose. Her warm stacked teeth. Her laugh, like a blanket kiss cracks through my tiny lips.
Alixa Brobbey is a poet and law student currently based in Provo, Utah.
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Few writers—and in particularly poets—have at once the skill and discipline to capture the sentimental moment and communicate it absent sentimentality. Practice law if you must, but only if it does not distract you from the practice of poetry.
How beautiful.