by Kai Coggin
The little girl in the post office doesn’t know me, but turns around and says oh hiiiii and waves real big and wavy, and shows me her brand new pink shoes that light up a little at the heel, and I say are those your new shoes? They are so pretty! because you have to talk to toddlers and smile when they talk to you, if you’re a decent person, right? And she looks down at them and nods all smily. I love talking to toddlers, more than adults most days, and I think she’s probably almost two, all soft blonde curls and bright baby blue eyes. A literal cherub in broad daylight. Her mother says she is a sponge, just hearing and saying and repeating everything, brand new words and brand new world around her. She shows me her new dress, all of its colors and stripes of rainbow. She says this is my dress! this is my chooos! We make (very) small talk as her mom takes care of the packages. She hides under the postal window countertop like it’s her own tiny little house, her very own personal cubby hole, and I so want to crawl under there too, maybe have a tea party or talk about flowers, but I just watch from my 6ft socially-distanced X mark, next in line. She picks up a sticker on the floor, maybe a corner of a stamp, and wants to put it on the wall but it doesn’t stick, almost puts it in her mouth on her tongue, before I tell her no no no that’s dirty honey and open the flap of the trash bin to have her throw it away. She bumbles adorably over and throws away the tiny scrap. Emme she keeps saying Emme! I ask Is that your name? Mom answers, no that’s her best friends name. Her name is Trinity, but she can’t say it yet, and I think of that newness, roll it around on my tongue, the so-new-you-can’t-even-say-your-own-name-yet new, that the syllables haven’t even found her sounds. Trinity. Trinity. I say her name in my head, as mom and little wingéd thing hold hands and turn to leave. Bye Trinity! I say smiling really wide, and she turns and waves all big and wavy, with her whole arm, bright curls bouncing, heels all aglow, bye-bye! Her sweetness lingers a few moments in the air after they leave, that pure vibration, and I know I am not the only person in the post office who feels its thick nostalgia.
On the way home, it pours down rain out of nowhere, I mean torrential, buckets and buckets, in the middle of the day and the sun is also shining, mind you, so the moment is a mix of bright slants of light pouring through dark clouds, and downpour. I’m following a truck pulling a horse trailer that kicks up the mist from the wet road suddenly drenched, rain easing up now, the sun shining in from the west and golden. The slants of sunlight turn the mist kicking up in the tires into a rainbow, and I am literally following a rainbow all the way home, disappearing and reappearing again with the curves of the road, a path of color in the kicked up mist beaming, and the rain easing and the sun still persistently shining, and perhaps that little girl’s rainbow has transcended space and time, her innocent joy lingering as fresh magic, and the sponge of her little bright heart is squeezing out all over my ride home, and maybe that trailer isn’t pulling a horse at all, but a unicorn. Yeah, I bet there’s a unicorn in there. For sure.
Kai Coggin (she/her) is the author of four poetry collections, most recently MINING FOR STARDUST (FlowerSong Press 2021) and INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black Lives Matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and the host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country — Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award and named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated four times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016 and 2018. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary Review, TAB,
Entropy, SWWIM, Split This Rock, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Tupelo Press, West Trestle Review, and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review. She lives with her wife and their two adorable dogs in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.
