A tipsy walk, the walk we took

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A tipsy walk, the walk we took
Nathaniel Mackey, ‘‘Double Staccato’’

When auntie-mommy walks out of the bathroom, she uses one hand and arm to hold her breasts, and the free hand to cover her poonani. She runs across the room snickering and giggling at herself, her hips shuffling from side to side.

When you come out naked, you stand with your hands on your hips. You tilt your head to the side and make eye contact with whoever is there. And if no one is there, then you look at yourself in the mirror. Your whole body forming the word ‘‘there.’’

All of our stomachs protrude into fatty paunches before forming the pillow of our poonanis crowded between our thighs.

I’ve inherited both you and auntie’s relative hairlessness. Auntie-mommy once joked in front of her third husband that it was our ‘‘French’’ blood; he’s dead now.

When I walk out naked, I swing my arms at my side and look into any vanishing point.

Mother, you and I have had different youths. Mine is much more cautious, I am a trapeze artist with a taut net. I’ve never met the men you’ve known, or had the kind of sex you’ve had, although we may have done the same drugs: you in a boyfriend’s car driving down 95 in the 70s, and me on a mountain in Brazil on a university budget.

Both you and auntie’s eyes scour my body when I leave the shower; you both say it is to make sure, but neither of you tell me of what.

We take a tipsy walk, the walk we take, toward the ocean on Higgs Beach so we can return to what we came from. The only lights on the island are the lights of passing cars, the drivers of which I am sure are surprised to see three naked Black women scuttling naked toward the sea across the street like crabs.