I was the oldest of eight,

the little mother hen with skinned-up knees,

tugging tiny hands through muddy fields,

laughing loud enough to drown out hunger.

Daddy came home with coal dust in his lungs,

Mama stirred love into every pot,

and somehow, we were rich

not in pockets, but in the way we held each other close

when the wind howled through the cracks in the walls.

Late at night, I would sneak and watch them

Daddy spinning Mama slow in the living room,

bare feet on worn wood,

a record whispering old love songs,

wine glasses winking in the dim light.

Red lipstick smudges on daddy‘s cheeks

I’d sit cross-legged on the rug and think,

‘Someday, I’ll have a love like that.’

And then came Tommy.

Seventeen, freckles and wide-eyed,

wandering the county fair like I belonged to the sky

and he was gravity.

Blond hair catching the last light of the sun,

hazel eyes warm as August wheat,

olive skin that made me think of faraway places.

He tossed a few dimes,

won me a stuffed cow,

grinned like he’d lassoed the moon.

And at the top of the Ferris wheel,

where the world felt small beneath us,

he kissed me

my first kiss,

and everything inside of me melted,

like I had been waiting my whole life

to belong somewhere, and suddenly, I did.

We built a life from calloused hands and early mornings,

him in the mines, me with babies on my hip,

love tucked between dinner plates and Sunday mornings.

The years rolled like summer storms,

too fast, too fierce,

and then, too quiet.

Black lung took him before his time

fifty-four, and gone with the wind.

Mama and Daddy are gone now too,

and I, an old woman with silver in my hair,

sit in the same chair where Mama used to rock,

watching the light fade, waiting for the stars.

Some nights, I ache to go,

to see Tommy waiting,

young again, grinning like he did that first night.

But I hear his voice in the wind,

feel his hand in the hands of our children,

and I know

he would want me to stay.

So I live,

for the babies that are now grown,

for the love that still lingers in these walls.

But the child in me still loves you, Tommy,

the same way the woman in me always has

with everything I am,

and everything I’ll ever be.