Jane-Rebecca Cannarella

Wax Cups

The bridge over the Long Island Expressway

was a jackdaw cutting through holiday traffic.

a father flanked by young daughters,

McDonald’s sodas in hand,

bundled in winter coats,

watched the cars below.

The daughter to the left,

her ponytail unfurling with flyaways

at the temples—

in middle school we called them “wings”—

jumped, pointing at cars,

as we slipped along underneath.

They were 495 East sentinels

celebrating a winter ritual.

Years from now, with the snow

falling sideways, they’d recall

icy hands pressed

against waxy cups,

while the world sped under their feet—

their dad in the center of it all.

Museums exist, hovering

over small towns, contained

entirely in watching bodies.

We tread well-traveled paths

until we reach the bridges

suspended above our childhood.

“Remember?” the girl in the pink coat

will ask her winged sister,

and they’ll see times

they didn’t know were sacred

until much later.

Jane-Rebecca Cannarella (she/her) is a writer and editor living in West Philadelphia. She edits HOOT Review, a magazine published on postcards, Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, a broadside press, and was an editor for Lunch Ticket from 2015 to 2017. Jane-Rebecca is the author of the flash fiction collections, Better Bones (Thirty West Publishing House) and Thirst and Frost (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), as well as the poetry collection Eleven Hundred (Really Serious Lit), and others. She works as a paralegal for an immigration law firm, and likes cats and salt.