Mama wonders what else of the despised man courses through the veins of her boy with bird-like bones and earnest eyes. The cruel humor her husband uses to diminish her sense of self? The lack of imagination that trapped her in a joyless life where the only thrill is in making cheese-covered fried foods intended to finish hardening his heart?
She prays her son’s lifeblood carries the man who once found an abandoned kitten, tenderly placed it in her hands, made her believe love was satiny fur, a feline purr.