May The End Be Well For All

- Marianna Pogosyan

The best place to lose our wiggly teeth was under grandma’s queen-sized dining table, with a mouth full of grilled pork and fresh blood. It was there—veiled by the ivory of her vinyl tablecloth, alongside the dressed feet of our guests, beneath a spread of regal fodder—where childhood happiness dwelled. There, we whispered secrets. There, we pursed stolen cigarettes between our lips. There, we swapped pigeon feathers and sniffed foreign bubble gum wrappers.There, we untied Uncle Rob’s shoelaces and counted the stitched holes of Aunt Rosa’s nude hosiery. There, we raised our plastic mugs with tarragon lemonade and said toasts: To the boys we loved loving us back! To living till one hundred! To meeting Michael Jackson!

Unlike us, the Armenian adults above our heads never ran out of toasts. Suddenly, with a shot of amber cognac in his hand, the most quivery relative turned into a veteran orator, and the most mousy neighbor metamorphosed into a philosopher.