Target Group

Once upon a time I was on my way to supervised knitting club, 'Cause you know that knitting unsupervised is like a sin, and my battery died and I fell in a black hole. It ate me up and, sorry Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, but it spit me out, precisely where I was going, but not where I wanted to end up. There were all the queens, knitting their so-and-so's winter scarves, carefully including little scraps of their hairs and eyelashes so to mark their territory. And I knit, for you. But you were just a picture from a wallet I found in a library parking lot while I was checking out books on Electroshock therapy and Snails, so I returned the wallet but kept the picture. And for you I would sometimes practice my piano playing, with the music scores closed. And you would just smile back. That same old smile in the faded class photograph. No name, just on the back, "for tracy," in cursive. The "y" was not loopy. Neither are my "y's". Then one day, I saw you, leaving a doctor's appointment. You had aged a bit since the photograph was taken, but there you were, your pretty smile all intact. And you were beaming. Then out from behind you came a brunette girl with rosy cheeks and the beginnings of a pregnant tummy. You looked at her with the smile that had listened to my favorite love songs, watched me get ready to go out, but always were there when I stumbled in the door, lipstick awry. You touched her protruding stomach and gave it a kiss. And the scarf turned to spaghetti.