by Lydia Copeland Gwyn

First Memories

My mother’s legs—milk and black-seed, bare toenails.  Blanket, laundered soft and thin, spread on grass like cloth across a table. Picnic cheese and bowl of green grapes. The yard, damp green in my knees, whose grasses hide smears of purple-dyed Easter eggs, vinegar smooth. Hard-boiled in the dog’s mouth. Beagle teats and tummy, swelled in sympathy when my mother became pregnant with me—she’s a picture now, clovered in the yard, sun shining Kodachrome-gold in her fur. My first memories are of the dog—white paws, freckled with mud, bruised sky of her nails. I remember a morning ceiling—pony white—and shadows moving across like a body walking. Hum of air, raindrops on windows. Down the road, a playground with sling swings, sidewalk quadrants, scribble of ants.