I remember you.

The way you smelled like Noxema and cigarettes before you bathed. You smelled like Jean Nate the rest of the time.

I remember your love of sour cream and, when you took a notion, you’d pepper yourself up a little bowl of it and go to town.
You weren’t opposed to a high-ball or two.

The only committed relationships you were interested in were the ones you had with cigarettes and Coca Cola. Your love affair with the soda began when it still had actual coke in its formula. You were a speedy kind of woman in all the ways that make a difference.

You worked at the rubber plant and had man-hands. You raised your daughter with your half-sister. You both were highly suspicious of everyone. You lived across from a ‘beer garden’ and when I slept over, I watched fucks or fights in the parking lot when I was supposed to be sleeping.

You weren’t a ‘woman’s libber’, and you couldn’t stand them, but they would have held you up as their representative if they knew you. You never needed a man to raise along with a child, so you ditched the man and kept the child way before that type if thing was even fashionable.