PhotographyByChilb

a. you write promises in the margins when you should be stealing stars, plucking lashes from your eyelids and adding them to your fingerpaints. you always swear on wishing with fallen eyelashes and the ticking of 11:11; comet tails and one-cent figures are too predictable to fit the mold you crave. and you shout about your luck at catching me upon your sleeve, claiming destiny has nothing to do with it. "but if it isn't fate," i whisper as the twilight fades, "i never would have stumbled. you'd have been in the wrong place at the right time and by missing fate, we'd have lost the chance." you smile with boyish confidence.

i. My mother doesn’t wear her wedding ring anymore. Instead, it sits on the counter above the kitchen sink, like she took it off while washing dishes and forgot to put it back on; but I’ve seen her pick it up and wipe the counter and walk away, like she no longer recognized it as her own. ii. She and I have the same long, slim fingers, except hers are clean and manicured and tanned, they’re used to flipping through old books, still delicate and fragile, with arthritic veins tracing through; Mine have always been pale and torn up and raw from anxious nerves, tough callused finger tips from encounters