Skyscraping - Cordelia Jensen Page 0,2

then?

I think the most important quality of a mentor is that they are open to following students where they want to go. Not always pushing their own agenda.

Okay, got it. Thanks. Number two: Who’s one of your mentors?

That’s easy. Your mother.

What? Why?

Because she helped me the most at a time when I needed it, and always encouraged me to dream big without telling me what to dream.

She did?

Yes, Mira, she did.

UNKNOWNS

In second grade, school had us

plant flowers in pots, decorate them

for our moms for Mother’s Day.

I picked the flowers with the most buds.

Not sure which color to choose.

I painted tiny animals,

the only thing I knew Mom liked.

Chloe planted daisies for her mother, painted her pot blue.

Said her mom didn’t like strong smells.

Everyone seemed to know their moms’ favorite flowers

colors

smells.

All of them experts.

I went home, nervous,

pink carnations in my painted pot.

Dad, April and I ate dinner,

waited and waited.

Mom never showed up.

NEWBORN STARS

In the fall of ninth grade,

Mom left a note saying she’d gone

to Italy for a while, to study.

Mom left,

April wept,

Dad cooked,

I smashed one of her glass fish.

Buried it in the back of my closet:

mouth open,

gasping for water,

drowning in a corner, dark as sea.

Day after,

Dad held a family meeting,

April held a glass frog,

I said I didn’t care that she left—

she was hardly here anyway.

After the meeting,

April stuck next to me.

I stacked my sweaters like Pez candy:

pink, purple, gray.

Assembling order from mess.

That weekend,

Chloe and I got fake IDs,

so easy

it surprised me.

I never drank,

just followed Chloe into bars,

poured my Sprite into her vodka

while she

looked the other way.

Took fake puffs from cigs

newly sprouted from her fingertips.

Newborn stars

take millions of years to form,

billions of tons of mass to make.

But the constellation of a family

can shift shape

in seconds.

TURNED

She was gone 13 months,

returned just before Halloween,

Sophomore year.

I had already found Yearbook. Adam.

When she came back,

arms full of glass,

April said welcome home,

Dad held her.

I said nothing.

She reached out for a hug

but I

turned

the other way.

MISMATCHED

Years later,

sorting mail,

bills from junk,

things Mom can’t be bothered with,

I hear her fruit earrings rattling

down the hall.

She matches our apartment:

plastic oranges and bananas drip from her ears,

her lips painted red peppers,

bright like our dining room table.

Her hair a tousled salad like

laundry left unfolded in piles.

Down the hall,

Mom’s artwork:

glass roosters and fish hijack the bookshelves,

infest the coffee table.

As many times as I try

to place them in cabinets

or line them in height order,

they march back in,

a disordered stampede,

a resurrection.

Mom’s closet:

green scarves overlapping purple purses,

scattered costume jewelry

falling on top of random shoes, socks.

Mine: jeans, hung, creased,

sweaters folded in color order.

One pair of sneakers, flats, boots, clogs.

One mom

one daughter

mis-

matched.

SOMETHING STELLAR

In Astronomy class,

formulas scatter the blackboard.

Mr. Lamb tells us

in May we’ll see

a solar eclipse as a class.

We’ll all stand

in the sun

and go dark

for a minute.

In May, seven months from now,

just a month before graduation

into college, yearbook done,

a month before we’re flung

into space,

I will be

something stellar.

Even as the world goes dark around me,

I’ll keep my shine,

I will not eclipse.

SHADOWING

Tuesdays, out early, two frees in a row.

Sky so blue, walk past the bus stop,

skip through the park,

the reds and yellows

nip at the greens,

tell them it’s their turn to change.

Cross the bike track,

remember flying, back of Dad’s bike,

first time riding a two-wheeler,

his pushes, my breaths, how I pedaled.

Now, passing benches,

an emaciated, bearded man with a hollowed face

lies on one, propped up on full gray trash bags,

hands shaking—

I tell myself not to look.

Think of what Dad would do,

jog back, squish a dollar into the man’s cup.

His sign reads:

Homeless, starving, lost everyone.

Lesions on his scalp, his forehead—

like the skeletal men they show in health class,

unprotected sex, flashing at us, warnings.

I scurry away, eyes on the changing leaves,

Belvedere Castle, the pond,

kids chase their mom around the tire swing,

don’t look at the trash falling from bins,

don’t smell the urine on the rocks,

don’t read the SCREW YOU graffiti

sprayed on the old stone wall.

Look at the kids play,

look at the statues,

look up into the blue,

all those buildings framing the sky.

The wind picks up

as I get close to home,

it comes to me suddenly:

The yearbook theme should be New York City.

HIDING

Jimmy, the doorman, says hello,

I push the elevator button, make it glow.

Breath speeding up, can’t wait to tell Dad

I’ve got my theme.

Turn the key.

Walk down the hall.

Go to his room.

But as I turn the handle on his bedroom door—

I hear a yelp.

I hear a NO!

And then I see:

James, naked on my parents’ bed.

Dad, beet-red, naked,

hiding

his lower body behind the door.

A UNIVERSE AWAY

I drop my backpack. Run.

Don’t wait for the elevator.

Chase the stairs down, like a slide.

Run past Jimmy, out onto Riverside.

I make it to the water.

Yell at a boat on the