Synkroniciti is excited to welcome back writer and poet Aaron White of Indiana, who won our “Birds” short story contest of 2019 with a stunning piece called “Soonest, Saturn.” The poem “Fifth of Her Color” provides a complex and thoughtful look at how our expectations and understanding change as we gradually realize how our parents sacrificed for our well-being. For many of us, this happens as we continue the cycle by nurturing our children. Sometimes this is too late for us to express our gratitude.
“I once told Dad I’d never toil in a factory like him. He held his head and said his legacy was to live through his kids. I thought he was stupid while not knowing his labors: the hours spent over bills in stockpiles that stared back, his wife whose house was an hour away, me, a teen with magazines worth of worry.”
The extreme vulnerability and willingness to express both hope for the future and regret for the past is deeply moving. Patterns repeat, and yet there are differences. Dreams change from generation to generation. Our best hope is that we can love each other even if we don’t understand one another and that we can learn to express that love in ways that resonate.
“our daughter sprouts to/ your height. The bubble-/ maker hums. She makes a mess/ of her clothes. I know what it means/ to live through our kid, to labor for/ a fifth of her color.”
Aaron alternates between delineated sections that reveal his relationship with his daughter and prose sections that explore his feelings toward his father. This illustrates how his relationship with his daughter still lives and breathes, while his relationship with his father is frozen by death. One way to honor a dead parent who did their best is to pay their sacrifice forward.
Read “Fifth of Her Color” in Synkroniciti’s “Dreams” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Aaron White is an educator in Terre Haute, Indiana. His writing has previously appeared in Synkroniciti, The Smart Set, The Anatomy of Desire: An Anthology of Distance, Months to Years, The World We Live(d) In: An Anthology of Poems about Social Justice, National Social Science Journal, and other publications. Aaron’s greatest accolade is being designated a “safe space” by his teenage daughter.