What Fotoula Remembers

By Petrula Laudato

Her mother in a checkered housecoat, a shiny cross at her breasts. The cracked Venus de Milo outside the nightclub where her father played bouzouki, while her mother sewed taffeta dresses for girls named Abby or Claire. Birthdays with baklava instead of ice cream. The jolt of Jimmy Spiro’s beer-soaked tongue in her mouth on the Zorba Room dance floor: Could this be love? Her father, only in dreams now: his cheeks ashen, reaching for a bottle of Ouzo behind a stack of tablecloths. Her mother gliding toward him with a glass, the red of her nails aglow above him.

           
I write in order to remember.