When I reach out my arm, I see the cellulite of survival and a small constellation—the same my mother’s mother had when she reached toward me with love.
I’ll remember the exact pitch of her manicure running across her skin. I didn’t know the sound of a scratch could be inherited—nails lightly grazing the edge of the body—that sound I first heard when I saw myself not as myself, but as the imagination of my mother’s mother.
We’ve lived in each other longer than I could ever know. “She’s your star”—a memory—held the same way you gracefully placed your hand on your heart before dinner.