Loretta Wray
By Terri Kirby Erickson
My mother, lipstick red, barefoot, toenails painted
the palest shade of pink, stretched out her dancer's legs
and rubbed suntan lotion into a face
that should have been magnified on a movie screen—
the kind that bowled men over even with curlers in her hair
and children dangling from both hands wherever she went.
They never saw the greasy chaise lounge behind our house
where the sun whispered sonnets in her ears
and darkened her skin with hot kisses while the radio
played "Blue Velvet." And the green grocer and the mailman
and the gas station attendants and the jean-clad
teenage boys loitering downtown on Saturday afternoons,
who caught glimpses of Loretta Wray every now
and then, if they were lucky, would have dropped dead with desire
if they'd seen her sunning herself in our backyard wearing
nothing but a two-piece bathing suit and a lazy, sun-drenched
grin, the best years of her life almost, but not quite, past.
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(Reprinted from A Lake of Light and Clouds (Press 53); originally published in storySouth)
Source: https://www.press53.com/terri-kirby-erickson/?rq=terri%20kirby
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