by Charlotte Hamrick
Chopping fresh mint brings you into my kitchen, remembering how you mixed it with yogurt and cucumber, bringing exotic flavor to our Mississippi palates, the scent bright & sharp in our pedestrian noses. My friends thought you were cool which pissed me off. I thought you were unpredictable, indifferent. Not a home-grown Southern mamma, you didn’t act like theirs. You wore wild colors & lots of turquoise, talked fast & laughed hard. Sometimes you were good at mothering, sometimes not. I wish I’d tried to understand you, then. To look past the bravado of trying to fit in but failing gloriously. Now, I rub mint between my fingers, hold it to my nose & see you mixing the yogurt, all of us watching for what happens next.
Charlotte Hamrick’s creative work has been published in numerous online and print journals including The Rumpus, Flash Frontier, Emerge Literary Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, and New World Writing. She’s had nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction 2021, and was a Finalist for Micro Madness 2020. She is Creative Nonfiction Editor for The Citron Review. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and a menagerie of rescued pets. Twitter: @charlotteham504 Website: Zouxzoux.wordpress.com
Emerge Literary Journal 