Charlie Sharp
There’s a little girl standing in the doorway.
I invite her in, offer her a cup of coffee. She says she prefers black; I pour two cups of hot chocolate. I know she’s lying, even if she doesn’t. Her pockets give her away, heavy with limes.
Your hair is different, she remarks. I know her blondeness is a relic of childhood, her long locks a now-distant memory of girlhood. I don’t tell her. She clutches her braids anyway, and I smile. Less brushing this way.
She asks if I’m a writer yet. I show her my little notebook, full of everything and nothing. Just like Jo, she laughs, and she spins, and for a moment I swear she is on ice skates, inches from the river’s frigid water without a care in the world. I know how long it will take her to join me on the bank when she falls, and I let her twirl anyway, until she comes to a stop on my bedroom floor.
I lift her little body off the ground and lay her on my chest. She grabs at the fatty part of my arm, delighted it’s grown as soft as my mother’s. Her weight is comforting, and I am grateful she’s still so small. Neither of us move for a while, suspended in a silence she is yet to understand.
When the little girl leaves, she presses a lime into my hand, and I press a kiss to her forehead. I don’t tell her about the hole in her pocket, or the trail of green fruit she will leave in her wake. I don’t tell her how dearly she will miss them, or how glad I am to watch them roll, forgotten, trailing off behind her. She waves, and I smile. I don’t tell her goodbye.