Girl #3 in the Canteen

My mother—in her heyday—had been quite
a looker. Pretty enough to have been a Bond girl, framed
in a sniper’s scope, I mused to myself. As a teen,

thumbing through plastic sleeved albums (eight curved-
edge photographs to a double page spread, fizzing

lightly with static at each turn of a page), I wished
I’d inherited the gamine charm of her youth, instead
of the broad-nosed, dark-skinned, stocky sensibilities
of my paternal line. I spose I should’ve been thankful
that I hadn’t been pretty enough to have got into
any real trouble. I was simply a supporting
sidekick (not even a best friend), blending

blandly into the smoothie of society, like a carrier-
ingredient nobody ever requested by name.