by Mallory Rader
For Sabrina
I drop your daughter onto her bed with a plunk. You are a daughter. I am a daughter. We joke about being each other’s mother. She wants to be a baby again. I touch something mythological in the air. Your toddler clenches her eyes shut, puts a thumb in her mouth. We sing her a lullaby. Your voice dominant. I try to harmonize. You and I are on the floor of Dad’s van learning lyrics. I’ve been afraid of changing ‘cause I built my life around you. Later, I see you shining in stage light from the crowd. She wants a book, a book, a book—you don’t even have to read them now. Burned in your memory. Was he scared? you ask. Goodness no, your daughter replies.
She wants another book, another book, another book. You rattle off another. Turn on classical music. Close her door. I have one sleeve in my coat when I ask, Do you ever remember us being read to? Somewhere, a semi-truck whirs down a road. We move on to blood clots, spotting, a small sac growing in your uterus. You tell me this is the last time you’ll try. Driving past trees cracked into pieces and mudpuddles, you, your daughter, and the small sac sleep inside me. Engine oil and water swirl technicolor. Tires skim over a rainbow. The car halts in the debris. I cup the rainbow and swallow it down, hoping to fill you with fruitful dreams.
For Riley
You were born on the brink of my adulthood—the peak of purposelessness—and you’re ten now. The feeling hasn’t waned. We are floating through rows of tame, divorced bushes and clinging roses when I ask if it seems like a dream. You are ten and maintain the words to explain that happiness feels unreal. You’re poking at frogs when you tell me this has happened before—us surrounded by the green, only August 1st proffers, and the way I say exactly.
The context is lost, swirling in the mini whirlpool you made with a stick, but the tone was unkind—I am and act as your sister, but carry the guilt of your mother. You say you want to run, and I tell you to go—to be a kid sprinting around a pond again, the gravel kicking up and hitting my ankles, always stopping to a halt. I ask if I can show you one more thing—before you seem to finish the syllables, we both are laying in the field by the hill, arms flopped out, faces fetching the lowering sun. I will not move until you do, you will not move until I do—I decide we could stay here forever, and you call each bird by their species within seconds of eyesight.
I promise to take you overseas one day. I hold the liquid of time, try to rearrange it all, make us girls together—blow a bubble around us and never leave home. The liquid turns gunk, the goo melts into the soil, we sit up at the same time. Oh, how beautiful it is for you to want to grow into me when I want to bloom into you. On the drive home, I capture the phrase it wasn’t a dream between my cheeks—I savor the happiness—and tonight I’ll dream a dream that you did, too.
In the Storm
by Beth Horton
Mallory Rader currently serves as head editor of Volney Road Review and has been published in West Trade Review, The Bookends Review, Gordon Square Review, Red Ogre Review, and others. She’s not quite sure if the world is real or if we’re all Sims characters. IG: @MalloryRader.
Beth Horton holds a degree in creative arts therapy, and she majored in Health Science at Niagara University, in Lewiston, New York. Her love for art began as a small child, watching her father paint into the wee hours of the morning. In addition to abstract art, Beth enjoys photography, mixed-media composition and sketches. Her work has appeared in several publications, including: Aji Magazine, Club Plum, Olit, Months to Years, and Pensive.
Ignatian Literary Magazine 