Jessica Hurlburt: Like Heaven

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

The lilies of the field, how they grow.

I miss when my grandpa made zeppole

in the kitchen; shaking wet, fried dough

in the endless brown, paper bags

that I’d take to school with me.

He liked to speak loudly, banging fists

on the dinner table, making the silverware sing,

I used to be embarrassed

that he spoke a different language, so courageously,

on the long-distance phone calls to Uncle Enzo

while I had friends around—

the same ones who sneered, almost politely,

at the fish sandwiches I brought for lunch, in a brown bag.

A scar banded across his leg from the milk truck

that ran over him when he was a kid. The skin

looked like melted plastic,

imprinted with the groves of a car tire:

I still see him sometimes— glaring out of apartment

windows on my walk home from work, waiting

for me to find my place at the table, for dinner;

waiting, anxiously, for me to step on my mother’s

patch of Lily of the Valley in the backyard; waiting, illuminated

by the dull glow of computerized solitaire, for the cards to shuffle.

I was little then, when powdered sugar, wet with spit,

looked like glue but tasted like heaven.

I’ve never mustered the courage, to yell up to those apartment windows,

and ask him for myself what he thinks Heaven tastes like. 

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Jessica Hurlburt (she/her) is a writer and creative currently studying in the state of Vermont. Her work is inspired by minor, everyday details and conversations overheard on the bus. Find more at jessicahurlburt.com