Resizing
In this vast, grassy yard that I once knew so well, I am looking for something, but all I can see is my father grilling a slab of beef from the A&P and Janey in the one-piece she took from me and will never return, sunbathing like a lizard basking after weeks of cold, yet, even when I try to look past this misfortune of a man who these days only hunts for discounts and creative ways to use his coupons and a girl whose teen idols never cease to confound me with gross insincerity that seems so clear at this age, even though, at fourteen, I surely worried mom and dad some, when, after grandpa Roy passed, I turned away from those timeless idols, and for a month straight, I wore Grandpa’s bowler, dad’s army sweater and then was sent to the principal’s for the first time in my life because I hit a girl for calling me “dyke” in the lunchroom in front of my friend and everyone else, I do not see what I am here looking for; I do not see the ring that no longer constricts my sunburnt finger, that no longer weighs down my left hand, so I am only more and more sure that when my dashing Darren, husband-to-be, walks out of that sliding glass door and to me, holding coffee in each hand, my mother trailing behind, still offering everything she can to her special guests—“cream and sugar, a lawn chair from the garage?”—when he says, “Where is it?” as I reach for my mug while Janey looks on from her pubescent haze and my father, oblivious in smoke, hums “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” I will say, I am telling myself I will say, “This—it never quite fit me…you knew.”
Jeremy King is a recent graduate of Emerson College with a BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing. He grew up in Connecticut and currently lives in Boston, MA where he works as a copy editor.
