It’s easy to
fall in love
with the
grocery store boys—
the one with the
tiny coffee cup
sweatshirt, too-tight
pants & cotton shoes or
the impossibly pale
fish boy who smiles
when he says, I’m
from Alaska.

The young mother born with the wrong name boards a plane. Flanked by her second and third child, she squeezes the last of the honey from the plastic packet and stirs her tea not with the flimsy stick handed to her by the pink stewardess but with her own stubborn finger ignorant of etiquette or the gossip gathering in the rows behind her.