I see Sweetness on the sidewalk with her friend, both of them barefoot and in little skirts, blue and yellow, the t-shirts with writing on them and printed plastic raincoats because it is raining. Their bare feet feel good in the rain, cool on the pavement, and their faces are serious, lips set in lines, heads tilted up.
I think they are thinking about something important. I am thinking about why today I feel big, important, like you might see me. Sometimes the rain does that–fills me. Sometimes I am on the edge of remembering what I am supposed to be.
I’m walking down the street three times a day, picking up the little pebbles, dropping them off, picking up at the field, dropping off, dropping on. My head nods when I wait in the parking lot, engine on, wipers swishing sleep-now-sleep. Ducks are pushing their boat-shaped bodies through the pond.
Now sirens down in the valley. Someone is burning out the homeless camps, weeks under the freeway overpass. They have been looking for sweetness all their lives, finding it, losing it, being surprised.
*****
All my life I have been searching or waiting for sweetness, tasting, not sleeping, not asleep. Colors like lollipops, Skittles scattered over blacktop.
Sweetness’s birthday is today.
Sweetness is a butterfly, wings like a yellow scrap of blouse torn on a nail.
Sweetness tastes blood when she cuts her finger and instinctively sucks it.
Sweetness has never been invisible. She knows to be visible, to wear bright colors, to eat noisy and colorful food—melons, celery, blow pops and Twizzlers.
A visible girl might drink water but an invisible Sweetness might drink bright drinks. If Sweetness were invisible, her shadow would show on the sidewalk, jump rope scuffing the cement like a horse rein. Her shadow would be sidewalk chalk, doorbell chimes, tap shoes. Sweetness would not stand for stepping back. She would learn to drive a car at 13, and would drive it loud, revving the engine at stoplights because Sweetness doesn’t like to stop.
Sweetness is sun searing the top of my head, the soles of my bare feet on the street.
Sweetness lives in my body, in the feel of silk shirts. Music thrums in her hair. Sweetness will step out in the street, into the flow of cars; bright as a fender.
