Same As It Ever Was

by Claire Lombardo

certainly never faced down a math test with anything but indigestion and formulas

They don’t happen very often, but moments like these of sensory recognition are some of the most potent she’s ever lived, the transportive effect of a whiff of perfume or pencil shavings.

She’d noticed this without realizing it as she followed Cal outside, motes floating lazily through the air, backlit by the sun, and wonders now if it has anything to do with the basic kinetics that come from having multiple people in a house;

there is doubtless the same amount of dust in her own home, but more people to stir it up, prevent it from settling on the surfaces.

Alma, miraculously, angles her body to give Julia free rein over the cluster of bobby pins on the desk. She dips her head back like she used to do in the bathtub, a tiny girl amid an ocean of tugboats and rubber octopi. Julia runs her fingers through her daughter’s hair, Alma’s skull now so sturdy and concrete. She twists a lock away from Alma’s face and pins it back near the crown of her head and then—taking a chance—she bows her face to kiss

“Try to be happy,” she

She watches her mother watch her husband, the person who used to know her best in the world and the person who does now.