The Littlest Bigfoot

You’ll use this luggage to go on your honeymoon.” Right after she’d said the word “honeymoon,” Felicia had gone quiet, maybe thinking that her bulky, clumsy, wild-haired daughter might never have a honeymoon.

scoop her up into their arms

to keep an open mind.

catch up with you

mounds of white dandruff flakes on their shoulders,

who sprayed spittle

home, alone in the pink-and-cream room that had won Felicia’s decorator a prize, Alice would lie on her bed, underneath its lacy canopy, or sit at her white wooden desk or in the pillowed window seat that overlooked Central Park, and try to figure out what it was about her that other kids didn’t like.