EDDIE AND DONALD
by Wendy Marie Vergoz
Featured on Life As Activism
Giggling girls have power the radio tells me
after the election. An epidemic of contagious
laughter spread through a girls’ school
in Africa, 1962, and no one then knew
why. Hearing this carries a now-giggling
me back to my 5th grade classroom—to tiny
freckles on Eddie’s nose, sprinkled sweet
as whispers. My girl-small hands unfold a scrap
of notebook paper, where penciled print
asks, Do you like Eddie? Circle: Yes or No
I circle Yes, for I like his tiny freckles and boy-sweet
smile, the sweep of his hair, dark across
brilliant blue eyes. Thin-boy Eddie sweet-boy
Eddie early love a tender age those tiny
freckles tic-tacked on that sweet-boy Ed—but
Tic Tacs startle me back to the radio’s
blaring news, to the president-elect and
to trauma to groping assaulting abusing refuting
all that is tender and good in this world.
Oh take me back to Eddie’s sweet-breathed
boyhood face, those tiny freckles sprinkled light
and me nearby, carried away in giggling.
Wendy Marie Vergoz’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Flying Island Journal, Ground, The Christian Century, Literary Mama, and Anglican Theological Review, and have appeared in exhibitions at the Harrison Center for the Arts, “Spirit and Place,” “Art of the Moving Image & Spoken Word,” “Wrestling with the Infinite,” and “Religion, Spirituality and the Arts.” Wendy teaches writing at Marian University in Indianapolis and a writing workshop at the Unleavened Bread Café for women recovering from injustices and traumas like domestic violence and drug addiction.
Image credit: Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash
