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As If Maybe Some of The Sun
by Lyn Lifshin

she brought to every
room still lingered in
my mother's eyes.
"Frieda, get your own
phone," room mates
wrote in her yearbook
"so we can get a
chance." That sliver of
light in the long dusty
apartment, color of
the cat's eye ring
neither of us coveted
but with its own wildness,
traces of who my
mother had been when
she danced barefoot
on her toes, dying for
lessons while her
father insisted until he
was dying, dance
was from the devil, a
sin. Wrong. And the man
she married never even
tried. Still, I remember
she kicked her legs to
gypsy music as if for a
moment she wasn't
hideously earthbound to
nothing she wanted
and for that moment the
gold flashed and you
couldn't tell the
dancer from the dance

 

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