Published Pieces

These are pieces of mine that have previously been featured in other publications.

‘Peach Fuzz’

When we met you shook my hand

you heedlessly picked it up

already fragile and peach skinned

and held it so tight that your uneven

and bitten-down-to-the-wick fingernails

pierced right through my delicate derma

to my cloying flesh

bleeding nectar down your unabashed fingers

and pooling between where our

shoes were merely kissing on the ground

I predicted I could be your ripe

flavor for at least a month

Till I inevitably became rotten

and you craved something that wouldn’t

pinch your gums as much when

I asked you to take a bite of me again and again

A tear-off paper calendar shows

a pile of weeks that stack into months

I consciously tuck my nose and mouth

into the hem of your moth-eaten t-shirt I stole

Masking my unavoidable aroma

Putrid and intoxicating

strong enough to erode any lingering attachment

You now fit your face

in between my neck and shoulder

and inhale slowly without recoiling

I feel the corner of our lips flick up

“Your hair tickles,”

I go to move it but your hand

Grabs mine with such care

I forget I’m supposed to be bruised

Your nose traces the tiny hairs that never grow behind my ear

“its like peach fuzz.”

Mājas

The first time my grandma tried bubblegum she swallowed it. The American soldier that freed her and her sisters from their Displaced Persons camp in Germany, laughed as they all ate- not chewed- the fluorescent pink gum that he gave them. Having tried the Latvian candy that my great uncles always bring to Christmas, I know that must've been the sweetest thing that had ever touched my grandma’s tongue as a child. A spark of color in a world of gray and ash.

She doesn’t like to talk about the actual Holocaust to my brother, cousins, and I. When shes does bring it up, she talks about the bubblegum and how that soldier was the first black person she had ever seen. When my mother talks about it, she’ll share the stories my grandma had slipped to her as a child. My mom said it was to put her own complaints and issues into perspective. You can’t whine to your mom because when she was your age a Nazi plane dove down to shoot at her for target practice as she was walking to her family’s barn. It makes a fight with your best friend seem miniscule. Makes all of your problems seem insignificant, almost laughable.

My cousin’s girlfriend, a girl whose quiet nature drives my aunt up a wall, studied abroad in Florence last spring. When he visited her they decided to stay a few nights in Riga, the capital of Latvia. My grandma was proud, her own children have never visited, let alone expressed any substantial interest to. My mom and her sister may even be citizens. Their late father, my Pa John, would mention acquiring their citizenship for them after the Berlin Wall came down. However, neither of them has ever checked to see if he left even more uncompleted things behind before he passed too early.

My cousin would send me pictures, awkward selfies in front of tall spiral buildings, the captions in Latvian. I would shove my phone under my mom’s nose, asking her to translate the words, which just looked to me like my cousin scrambled his fingers across his keyboard and clicked send. She would recoil as if it were a bad smell, and claim she wouldn’t know enough Latvian to translate. After pleading and annoying her, she would glance at the phone for a second, say he spelled a few words wrong, or that his grammar was off, and then would produce a perfect translation. All within two seconds, with little to no effort.

I’ve seen my mom perform this trick many times growing up. Whether its her and my grandma following a family in IKEA, trying to figure out if they are speaking Latvian or not, or my mom whispering to her cousin at a funeral, their tongues rolling in ways that the language that WE share never does.

In middle school I asked my mom why she never taught my brother and I Latvian. It was like she was withholding a secret code that we haven't earned the right to unlock yet. When my dad would hear these conversations, he’d butt in reminding us we were also Irish and Italian (but Boston Irish/Italian heritage is boring, and I’d rather eat one hundred Latvian candies than be boring). She said it was because she barely knew it anymore. She was fluent as a child, but then her kindergarten teacher told my grandparents that she sometimes had trouble not slipping into Latvian in class. My grandparents panicked, flashing back to when they first came to America, a melting pot that burns each ingredient as it’s added. For years, they only spoke English at home.

I see her first language spark on her tongue though. Whether it’s at an Easter dinner, singing a church hymn at a funeral, or when she is reading an old to-do lists from the 80s, forgotten in a kitchen junk drawer in our summer cottage in New Hampshire. It seems so personal, like she is the only person left who speaks this sacred and secret language.

I didn’t even know my mother’s real name until middle school. To be fair I practically did know it, but still, I felt the injustice in my bones. On her driver’s license, she is Anna M. Hughes. Pronounced by everyone Ann-a. It is actually Anna, as in Ah-nah. I gave her a lot of crap for that one. Even more recently, she told me she didn’t fully erase her maiden name. She added it as a second middle name. This time I wasn’t upset. In fact, I felt a sense of relief that confused me for why I felt it, but I did all the same.

It's no secret I want to go to Latvia. Finally see the country that I cheer for in every Olympic event that they make it to. See the bitter candies in actual stores, instead of the ceramic sunflower bowl my cousin made in her sixth grade art class. Apparently there is a house in my mom and aunt’s name there, but they don't collect rent from whoever lives there now.

My mom always comments when I plan my imaginary trip, not unkindly, but truthfully in the way mothers can.

“Wouldn't you rather go to Italy?”

Well, yeah I would. I want to go to Italy, Paris, Greece, and Japan. Also, Scotland, and when I think about it more, I have a cousin I could visit in Belgium as well. Even so, I still can’t help but feel like I have to go to Latvia. There could be nothing for me to find there except my grandma’s approval for going, of course. I can’t help but wonder, do I owe something to this country? It gave me my family, my history, and technically my life, and I only know a petty change handful of words in its language. It feels almost like a betrayal to not claim it as a part of me.

This year my mom finally told me the truth. Resentment, not a kind colored in anger but sadness, carried her words from her mouth. Her parents never saw America as their home. Not the country, state, or town they lived in. Not the tiny three bedroom house my mom grew up in. It was her home, and her sister’s without a doubt. That’s where their family was. My mom thinks it was never enough for them. They always longed for a home that was as foreign to my mom as it is to me. I don’t think she’ll ever go because then she’ll have to confront a piece of her parents that she was in constant rivalry with her whole life.

People always try to fix their parents mistakes with their own children. I think my mom made sure my brother and I had her completely. We never had to compete for her against her home. I think her plan worked. My brother studied political science, learning about how OUR government system works. I’m getting my degree in English, the only language my mother comfortably claims.

‘Happy Birthday’

I lick the frosting off of my finger, which I swiped off of your bunny sloped nose. Your giggle, a tinkling bubble, tastes like sugar in the air. For the 365th time I lay you down in your crib, its railings a wooden white picket fence. I’ll come home to you as soon as I can.

Now my body is folded like origami; my knees tucked into my chest, and my belly still swollen from months of swift kicks to the ribs and the cravings of garlic bread and pickles. Barriers of folded cardboard surround me, threatening to fall apart before my cue. Intoxicating addictive music eats at my ears as I methodically rub the grainy body glitter onto my shoulders. The familiar knock brings me back, startling me like a fish when a bored child flicks its bowl.

I countdown. Ten, Nine, Eight. I am wheeled in, I hear a blend of cheers and jeers and can smell through my nest, the tang of stale beer, which cauterizes the sharp pinch of anxiety that has crept up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. Seven, Six, Five, I tug on my hems and adjust my straps, sequins laid down slick against my body. Four, Three, Two, On- I burst through the faux cake, reborn with a different name and identity for the next thirty minutes. As always a few hands try to grab, and words pelt my exposed skin. I stomach it for the price of the tiny cake with the pink frosting at home in the fridge and your safe fenced den where you burrow safely. My eyes zigzag through the crowd and catch the time on their greasy old stove in red numbers. 11:59. I close my eyes for a second before I continue, thinking it’s the last few seconds of your birthday, and I am able to smile.