Spittin’

By Maura Yzmore

After Mom turned the house into a shrine, with Father’s photos everywhere, his college graduation portrait spat on me from the windowsill.

Father and I never got along. I usurped his beloved, became a difficult child, an impossible teen.

I wished Mom would pick me over him, just once. But she saw his army portrait and his childhood one, on a trike, spit right into my eye, yet she remained mum. I left for good.

But I’m a spittin’ image of him. I look at myself in the mirror and Father’s saliva soaks my face. I imagine kisses – belated, compounded.

         
Maura Yzmore is a Midwest-based writer of short fiction. Her work has appeared in The Molotov Cocktail, Coffin Bell, Ellipsis, and elsewhere.