14

My first memory happened on a stairwell, and stairwells have had special resonance as meaningful sites for me ever since. I was three years old, maybe. The stairs were wide and thin, the kind with no back to the steps, just floating slats. It was sunny and the room was white and yellow, the stairwell of an apartment building. Mom was ahead of me, on the steps above, holding paper bags of groceries in both arms. I fell. I was belly down on the steps, and I could see through the emptiness behind and under us. I can see it now. Just a column of pure air. I was afraid I would slip through, into space, even though I wouldn’t have fit through the slats. I looked up at Mom, who kept climbing the stairs strongly and calmly. “Get up,” she said. “Come on.”

 

 

 

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Molly Brodak is from Michigan and currently lives in Atlanta. Her poems have recently appeared in Field, the Kenyon Review, Ninth Letter, and Colorado Review. Her first book of poetry, A Little Middle of the Night, won the 2009 Iowa Poetry Prize. Click here for more info re: her memoir, Bandit.