What Might Turn

My face turns into my aunt’s face as I age. Now we know what she would have looked like at 35, 37, 40, 42. Lost in a gaze. Cigarette in hand, land of left-handed thoughts in her brain. Keep speaking while I rest a while in here, leaning back into the carseat of my memories. Days to nights, years to years, a Ferris wheel, an album backwards, woman to girl. Tennessee road at night, curves and headlights, deer waiting in the collard-green landscape. Light caught in marbles. Light caught in cotton. Strange light in the sparkle of asphalt. When a deer entered the road in front of us, and I screamed, my aunt laughed. It was the kind of breathless laugh where speech won’t form. She laughed until she was crying. My little brother was in the backseat, also laughing. Within six years, both of them would be gone. But that night, we returned to her home, to the suburb of the college town, and sat on her trailer floor, talking about our lives at school and how we’d like to skip a day or two. We helped her unpack boxes, and I read aloud from a Dear Abby book I found. A woman complained of her neighbors. A woman complained of her adopted daughter. In the lives of these women, no one was grateful, though they all said they should be. It was nice inside my aunt’s home. New and big and full of her things. But the floors were so hollow. My footsteps felt flimsy with all that empty space beneath.