By Kathryn Stripling Byer

Almost, but not quite
the name of my daughter’s best friend
from her early years,
honey-blonde child on the kindergarten floor
in her calico dress, smiling,
always smiling. No sad thing
could touch her, I almost
believed, so determined seemed she
to outshine any slight,
any future that held her accountable
to birthplace and parentage
making her answer to who she was
not: tristia
after all,
looking bewildered at finding herself
with a grocery cart stalled
in the check-out lane, two babies squalling,
her husband gone
and I don’t dare ask her why,
only how does she find time to dress up
her two little girls in such happy
frocks, clown faces grinning
all over their bibs
that she says she bought yesterday
on sale at Goody’s, a dozen for
three dollars. Thank God
for bargains she says and deposits
a box of disposable diapers alongside
the cash register. Suddenly smiles
as the checkout girl rings it up.
Pulling from out of her jeans
pocket one wrinkled twenty,
she tells me she’s happier
than she’s ever been in her life.