there are pieces of you in all I do

words begin to pour out of my fingertips

marking up my belated Grandma’s metropolitan museum journal

a calendar in the back tells me she bought it in 2011.

I could not do Grams the injustice of describing her in one word; for she was a thunderstorm of a woman

a painter, a Pisces, a mother, an art teacher, a model, a lover

her art lives on

on the walls of my bedroom

& my heart

My mother’s white long shorts drape over my thighs

Her clothes hang scattered in my closet

Styled like a lesbian, but she doesn’t like when we say it

A mother who loves her daughters dearly,

but Jesus Christ just a little bit more.

A water bottle perches on a wooden bench with me

“It has the perfect sip”

Charlotte had said to me.

I wonder if we ever take a sip at the same time, many cities apart.

Santana’s Europa is in my head.

And I think of Dad’s self-coined Sunday night

“music appreciation”

We bicker and shout

But shit, I miss dancing with him

I look up for a moment

In the distance there is a sidewalk

A simple thing.

How many times have we walked that concrete?

Fallen over, held hands, shed tears

I used to believe growing up ended after 18

But I am growing up all over again

and I get to share it with three best friends.

When I look close enough,

When I pay enough attention,

I find you everywhere

On my clothes, in my hair, in the trees

Anywhere