In the cramped kitchen, country ballads drift from the RCA on the counter. Yesterday’s newspaper waterfalls from a chair. Aunt Mary offers me a Nabisco Sugar Wafer and cinnamon candies stuck in a dish, gestures toward the table — cluttered with utility bills, a word puzzle book, a package of sheer pantyhose — where she eats her meals alone. She places my face in her hands, not tenderly but insistent, weighted in ways that I cannot know, my cousin died when he was 10, and presses her lips against my 8-year-old cheek, leaving a red smudge not easily wiped away.
Vince Puzick writes at a small desk in his home in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Find Vince on Instagram @anaturaldrift.