.....There were days when the sun melted over the horizon and clung to the house like the warm embrace of a mother. Orange and red bled together and poured into the living room, forming uneven blotches of warm colors. I sat on the couch, staring through the large window, watching how leaves drifted along the streets; they rolled in circles. Cold air tiptoed towards me, so I reached for the blanket that my mother Mae knit for me years ago. It was ugly and ripped at the end-seams, which I swore she could have sewn more carefully. Even so, its material, the pastel pink which had faded to a peach, kept me company as I sat watching the sunset alone. 

.....Blue peeked into the sky, whispering to me memories that were only remembered in the solitude of night. The night my mother taught me how to knit, her voice suffocated me in feathers. After every ten or so stitches, she’d gently ask, “Are you still watching?” and I would nod yes, watching her hands manipulate the knitting needles. Though I knew my mother could not knit forever, I wished for it anyway, fascinated by how easily her fingers danced around cloth and needles. Grating knocks whisked away the secure silence from the house. 

.....That same day my mother safely ended the stitch she was in the middle of knitting and walked to open the door. Once he set foot into the small house, a cluster of fires erupted at the bottom of my stomach. Miles was a man who only owned dirty white T-shirts and jeans, smoked cigarettes for sport, and grew a beard he never groomed. His eyes were indecipherable, and on multiple occasions I had stared at them while they stared at my mother. 

.....On a freezing winter night two years before this, my mother threw the shirts we owned into a plastic bag, kissed my father’s cheek then walked through the door. I knew that I would never hear my father’s voice again or feel the seedlings of a new beard brush against my forehead as he bent down to hug me. Because my father always worked, I spent the most amount of time with my mother, one of the only reasons I did not jump out of the car as we backed out the driveway, but rather stared at my father’s face through the kitchen window. 

.....When we met Miles, my mother and I were walking down the street, hands intertwined so she would not lose me in the crowd. Leaning against a fence, he greeted my mother with a sly “Hey, beautiful,” and she let go of my hand and walked towards him, expecting me to follow. My mother told me that night she had immediately become fascinated with the way his lips pulled apart when he grinned and that she only ever wanted to make him smile. 

.....“But, momma,” I said, “don’t you want to make me smile?” 

.....Taking my hands in hers, she answered, “It’s a different kind of love, sweetie.” The same honeyed tone appeared in my mother’s voice as she said, “Miles, come on inside,” the yarn and needle long forgotten on the table. 

.....After he stepped in, she closed the door and turned the lock. “I’m sorry,” she began, “but I didn’t get the chance to start on dinner. I was teaching Delilah how to knit our blanket.” Sparing me a small smile, my mother followed Miles towards the kitchen. 

.....The words “I’m sorry” swam through my mind like a fish swimming through tar. My mother repeated these words like a beaten hummingbird. Rather than preparing dinner for her significant other of two years, my mother created luscious lines of stitches, a full row for the blanket that she planned on making for me, an activity that was supposed to bring us further together. She knew the house became lonely and cold when she left me for Miles’ house, and she knew the blanket would provide a heat warmer than body heat, even a mother’s. Instead of

bringing us together, though, knitting that blanket only alienated me from my mother even more, for after every stitch she interrupted, I felt my stomach birth anger. 

.....The days I spent watching the days drift into nights belonged to me. I sat on the sofa and spent hours upon hours staring at the leaves dancing on the street together, and sometimes I turned on the radio like my mother and I used to do, and I danced in sync with the leaves. I was sure my mother often thought of me when with Miles just as I thought of her when I was alone. I was sure she thought about how my hand felt in hers or about my excited squeals whenever I correctly knit a stitch. It seemed as though whenever my mother and I finally had the chance to work on our blanket, Miles appeared. 

.....After Miles stepped inside, he groaned. “Don’t you know how hungry I get?” Throughout their relationship, my mother had learned to stay silent. “After a long day of work,” he complained and shook his head. “I expected more from you.” 

.....My mother looked at me, and I thought she was checking to see if I too was disappointed in her. 

.....Miles said, “Come on, Mae” and gestured towards the door. 

“No,” my mother said. “I really want to stay here tonight. To work on the blanket.” I stared at her, wondering why now she gathered the courage to defy his commands. Worry decorated my eyes, for my mother and I knew the usual consequence when one of us would disobey Miles’ commands. In the beginning of their relationship, he was only kind, “sweeter than candy,” my mother used to say while dancing with me to the songs humming through the radio. As time went on, he became more and more aggressive. I remember the first night they fought while yelling at each other, I could not fall asleep; I stayed in my bed, a lumpy horizontal being rather than a person, and that was the first time I felt empty, missing the warmth my father radiated when he used to read until I fell asleep. Months later I had gotten used to the yelling, but the first time I saw him hit my mother, I realized just how much I missed my father. 

.....The sky just began giving birth to evening, and my mother and Miles sat in the battlefield, at opposite edges of the kitchen table, the same table that we, months prior, had joyfully gathered around and talked about our days. Red cheeks, prominent veins, and airborne spit coerced me to recognize the ferocity they both invested into each other, the anger they claim stems from love, not hatred. This, though, did not seem like love. My mother’s throat must have adapted to this routine, for she and my father used to do this too - except he was much quieter than Miles. I assumed my mother was so dedicated to making her relationship with Miles work because she told me that new beginnings are exhausting. 

.....My father never hit my mother, so I had expected Miles to get her a warm cup of tea before suggesting that they calmly finish their argument in the morning. When my mother mentioned that Miles wasn’t allowed to see his biological daughter again because of criminal charges, his fist became a slingshot, flying back before landing on my mother’s jaw. With widened eyes, I sat there silently, overly aware of the spit suffocating my tongue, making me too frightened to say anything. I nearly tasted the blood. 

.....Silence pursued the atmosphere after. My mother retreated to the bathroom alone, yet I could still hear her muffled cries through the door. Miles stayed in the kitchen staring at the picture of his daughter he kept in wallet, and I sat on the sofa, staring at the other houses, wondering what was happening in their kitchens, what their conversations revolved around, and how often their mother’s boyfriend punched her.

.....As my remembrance faded, I heard Miles' voice harshly bring me back to reality. “You can work on your blanket tomorrow,” Miles said defensively. He glanced at me, and I wanted to be outside. I wanted Blue to sing to me through his locusts, I wanted Blue to turn on the lamp post lights on, and I wanted Blue to breathe a gust of wind onto the leaves. I wanted to float with the leaves outside. 

.....She stared at him for a quick moment, and I noticed anger, an anger I never saw in her eyes before even when she and my father argued. Bringing her hand up to lightly tap the bruise on her collarbone, she pursed her lips together then turned to me. “Stay inside, and don’t work on the blanket; I don’t want you to mess it up. We will work on it together.” 

.....“But then it’ll never get done.” 

.....As my mother trudged through the door, she turned around to smile at me, and I felt as though I had seen a shooting star that someone had stared at the sky for a while to see. Their footsteps echoed from their stomping on the porch. I could always tell the difference between their footsteps; my mother’s were gentle yet commanding, Miles’ were unwieldy. 

Blue had completely taken over the sky after their departure, its eyes sparkling in stars. After having recalled the first time I witnessed my mother being hit, I pulled the deteriorating blanket closer. I retreat to my imagination where mother never left me home alone because she never would have met Miles and she would sit with me on the sofa, gripping my smaller, clammy hand in her own, offering a mother’s intimacy. We would stare at the leaves flying down the street together until I got up to move the knob of our broken-down. Then we would fly together. .....We would sit at the kitchen table for hours upon hours and I would study my mother’s

hands while they move graciously to knit our blanket and there would be no interruptions. No grating knocks. 

.....I felt Blue’s presence in the room as I sat in an almost unbearable silence. I twiddled my thumbs. Night skies covered a multitude of people, yet I believed it rarely saw someone so lonesome. As locusts sang their melody around that house, I knew that I was not alone; Blue was there. They grew louder and louder. I gently placed my blanket on the sofa, scared that if I ripped another seam apart, my relationship with my mother would have the same effect. 

.....As the melody became deafening, I danced to the croaks of the locusts and the rustling coming from the tap-dancing leaves. My toes glided along the floor, my arms spread outward. As I spun, my vision lost its quality and instead of seeing things as they were, I saw blobs of color loosely strung on lowly hung strings. The soft and uncomfortable grasp of the carpet on my bare feet felt like Miles’s hands on my waist, which I had felt on multiple occasions when my mother was not around. He started touching me when my mother took trips to the market to get ingredients for his dinners, and I never could tell my mother in fear she would rip apart the blanket we worked on together. 

.....The sound of hard footsteps interrupted my reverie and suddenly, my feet stopped moving, my head stopped spinning, and I could see everything clearly. Miles entered the room, his face pale, his body reeking of cigarette smoke. As he stepped further and further into the room, I saw the fire ignite in the lamppost on the corner of the street, another sign that Blue was there with me. Disappointed, I sat back down on the sofa and pulled the blanket onto my body, and though it never worked as a battle shield before, it made me feel warm.

.....“Do you ever move?” Miles' voice sounded like he swallowed rocks years ago and was never able to cough them up. His fingers slid into their back pocket and impatiently yanked out a pack of cigarettes, and as he took out his lighter, I noticed how his eyes were intently focused on me. Because I hadn’t turned on the lights, it was still dark, dark enough to where Miles looked more like a shadow than a human. 

.....“Where’s my mom?” I asked. 

.....Miles strutted towards me, and I stayed on the couch. As he sat down, he draped his arm over my shoulder as if I were my mother. 

.....“You’re a pretty young thing.” He placed the cigarette in his mouth and breathed smoke directly my way. “Prettier than your mother, I’d say.” When he smiled at me, I noticed how his teeth were rotten, painted yellow, and I wondered if it was because of all the times he had called my mother ugly and had called me beautiful; I wondered if rotten words led to rotten teeth. His breaths engulfed my nostrils and I could not breathe. As I stared at him, I wondered how my mother once believed that he had perfected perfection. 

.....I stayed put and said nothing, hoping that this time he would realize I did not want him there. Cigarette-stained breaths crept closer and closer to me, and I felt his lips on my cheek. As soon as I felt this, I became angry with my mother, for she must have known something like this would happen. She knew how freezing it got when I was home by myself and that Miles was not the warmth I wanted. 

.....“Get away from me,” I said, looking away from him. Staring out the window, I watched the lampposts, their bright lights creating a heaven in the living room and suddenly I felt as though Miles was not there. I only felt Blue’s presence, which had always made me feel safe. Blue always showed up when my mother did not. “Get away from me,” I repeated with my battalion of locusts and my soldier lampposts. 

.....I was focused on the light beyond the window but still felt Miles staring at me. The only sound in the room was the hum of the radio. He inched closer, and I felt Blue shove me forward. Ignited, I launched and shoved Miles off the couch, yelling at him to get out, to leave me alone, and as he walked out the door, I destroyed the blanket, ripping the stitches on which my mother and I spent hours upon hours. My hands manipulated the fabric to undo the tainted stitches that only held memories of attempts rather than success. 

.....The locusts outside sang me Blue’s lullaby once again, and I stared at the way in which the leaves float; they fly towards one another until a gust of wind forces them away.

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