European History
By Holly Kent-Payne
My father smoked cigarettes
in boarding school. His father
ate olives in Greece for six
weeks before capture. He
changed our name. I
often have to explain
that it has nothing
to do with my mother.
My mother made beds in German
hotels. Her mother drank whiskey
neat for seventy-one years before
release. She could drink
my father under the table.
I once watched them leaning
together down the garden path.
In Greece, my mother ate
olives for the first time,
my father drank neat
whiskey under the table.
She held him in her German
bed for six weeks. Seventy
one moments of release.
Into the space between
Germany and Greece,
I was born.
Now the distance is different. Before
I boarded, my grandmother filled my
mouth with sweets. My grandfather
folded twenty pounds in my palm.
Now both are empty.
I explain the cigarettes
to my mother. I let go
of the leaning path.
——
Holly Kent-Payne is a recent college graduate from soon beginning an MFA at New York University. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
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