First Body Memory

"First body memory - clinging to my mother's flesh-colored stockings, my arms wrapped around her calf, my head trying to make a pillow out of a knee. It was dark and brown, everything was dark and brown, the wooden walls of the pews that towered above me, the ceiling, the seats, the skirt my mother wore, and the stockings that I clung to. They were coarse, not soft, but there was almost a regularity to their coarseness that made them soft, made them comforting to touch as bodies all around stood and sat and stood again while some vague voice boomed from speakers in distance. The muscles that moved beneath, the subtle smell that was so familiar, it said to me, 'This is a person. This is your person. Hold on to them.'

Hold on to them.