We watched chick flicks,
ate Jiffy Pop. She introduced me to lutefisk, you were in all my classes, she said.
At the U
I had noticed the sameness of her.
She told me I was the third black she’d ever met.
Racism always surprises me, like frostbite. I never know how to dress
for the temperature.
Minnesota has 10,000 lakes.
The natives have visited them all.
As the clear, freshwater between our friendship. When its weight
broke the ice sheet,
cold water drowned it.
At the mall, she told me she noticed people stared at me.
Slow melt epiphany.
She invited me to her apartment — never to her hometown.
She got married; I wasn’t invited to the ceremony.
It’s no different than the literature we studied that line from
A Passage to India quote ‘We are different’.
Allison Whittenberg is a Philadelphia native who has a global perspective. If she wasn’t an author, she’d be a private detective or a jazz singer. She loves reading about history and true crime. Her other novels include Sweet Thang, Hollywood and Maine, Life is Fine, Tutored, and The Sane Asylum.
Portage Magazine 