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Paperclips, lunch box, principal, swing, girl with a pink ribbon

She tossed the paperclips between her fingers. The cold medal leaving a cool imprint on her finger. He smiled at her from a distance, and she remembered the yearning felt in yesteryears. Small fingers draped around her arm, the feeling of completeness, the memories of a child. Her mother always whispered in her ear, “You are the stars in my heaven.” Smiling, always smiling at a man she loved the next day. The next day…and the next. He was always charming, calling her name and coming home in plaid pants with a cigar rolled into the pocket. She would fix them vodka sodas and her mother would request a mineral water, which meant vodka tall. They would always wink at her before grabbing her mother’s behind. As though they shared in some secret joke, a secret no one else dared to understand. And then they would walk away….away she would pull at her necklace, the one her mother had gotten for her on Mardi Gras. That night her mother had filled the house with music, African drums. She had smiled in a corner, as her mother swayed back and forth to the music. Her hips finding the rhythm and then letting go. Into the masses she had been pulled. The streets lit with Mardi Gras partygoers, chanting in the square, her mother kissed her cheek and bid her good night. She felt the tears encountering the peaks and valleys of her face. “You are the stars in the heaven my little one, never forget your worth.”
And with that she had disappeared into the night, blowing kisses, promising memories. She walked to school alone that day, waiting at the bus stop with a pink lunch box, empty. Her mother had woken that morning and made her a sandwich with marshmallows and hot sauce packets. She had smiled and said thank you.
“You are the stars in my heaven,” her mother whispered, falling back into the cloud of smoke permeating from the bedroom walls. Male laughter reverberated onto the couch and vibrated through her chest. She walked through the halls of the school, pink lunch box held tightly against her chest. Little pink ribbon tied neatly on her head, small circles formed in knot. It wasn’t until lunchtime that she realized she was being stared at.
Her pink ribbon seemed to melt onto her head falling in shattered pieces along her shoulder. Her empty lunch box brightly shining in her face, leaving a pink glow on her forehead.
The principal called her into the office. Smiling the smiles of a stranger’s pity, “We have some news for you” she whispered to her nodding toward the man in the grey suit. “You will be spending some time with a new family. How would you like that?”
She looked at the ground imagining a field of roses and a little girl on a swing. “I would love that,” she replied holding the roses in her fingers.
The stars of the heaven.
And a little more.