She leaned over, drawing me into her side. I fit with my head sitting on her chest. The hymn finished and she pressed her lips to my crown. “You’re just like me, you can’t sing a note.” Bestowed with lack, but bonded too. I squeezed my shoulders into mum’s side body, as if I could cleave it and return to the beginning. This tone deafness was one of many traits gifted to me. A list that would grow with me, each one stitched into my heart like pen marks on a door jamb.

8 minutes at Carbonic Coffee, TO
prompt from Elena Ferrante’s The Story of the Lost Child


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