Postcard Memoirs

                                          by: holly hofer

an evening in my house in a neighborhood not far from possibility. i sit on the floor, up close, watching a rerun of lawrence welk on the tv. i hold up five thin fingers counting my age, sharpening the soft-colored light from the screen, then bang! i am on it—i am on the tv! my sister says, she’s me, not you, and i say, oh, but that’s me in the background at least.

i’m in middle school, and the tv talks to me from four to six every day i don’t have soccer. i befriend oprah and then the queen of nice in two separate dreams. does it count when it’s in your mind that you’ve done something—that you’ve actually done it?

the magazines do flips at the doctor’s office. matching paintings schmooze on the wall. even if there is no sign, everyone knows, please leave the magazines for others to enjoy. some rebel’s inked up the personality quiz in mine. the psychiatrist guides me to her office. she asks what i expected a psychiatrist to look like. i shrug. she’s kind. i’m somewhere else. i receive no plastic trinkets for being good but leave with a slip of paper and  two black books on darkness and light. she can’t be sure, but I will devour the books—can’t be sure, but I will return them. my mom waits in the parking lot. she smiles. i gloom, half-asleep. i hold no expectations, only seventeen and a half years and lackluster eyes.

i’m caught in a web of fictions. i can’t be sure that i will wring understanding from this pain. in the hospital, a romance plays. for a few hours i believe i am kate winslet in titanic and, god, it’s exhilarating to be in love and awful every time we sink.

Holly Hofer recently graduated from Flagler College in St. Augustine. Two of her prose poems, included in the Spring 2011 issue of the Flagler Review literary magazine, can be read at the Flagler Review online.