Avenues Revisited

It was not sadness that silenced me that day, but an eagerness for motion. Three years spent missing my mother's arms. I was going back to them. No tears for Haiti, even for the last goodbye at the silver doors. Curls drooped on my shiny forehead on arrival. I saw lavish costumes with intricate head wraps, baggage carousels and moving stairs. Foreign words blared above me and my hand tightened in the pale palm of a uniformed escort. Frowning, anxious for the face decorated with moles. Finally, wrapped in her warmth, happy with scents of Dax pomade and English lavender. The stranger with nappy hair stood at my mother's side with a distant smile. I missed my father's dimples, hiding in the stubble. I held on to what I knew, pressed my face against the powdered neck. I gaped at the jagged shadows and lights of the Manhattan skyline. I hoped for loaves of warm bread shaped like doves, and pudding made with brown sugar. The new bridge did not bend under my footsteps. No spotted horses drank near it. In the river below, women did not wash garments to be bleached in the sun and dried by the ocean's breath. I'll always remember winter's first touch surprising my bare legs and a blue coat much too small.