the stickiest stuff

Mia Sitterson

I ask the baby I take care of if I can eat her toes and she says yeah and I say I can? all aghast and
she says yeah at a higher pitch and then I do I eat her toes and she has no toes left and cannot do
her baby things like learn to run faster and faster and she is happy because mia snack but I am
unhappy because now the baby toes I loved are gone so I vomit all ten of them and we wash
them in the sink with tepid water but the baby only knows hot and cold and nice so she feels the
water with her fingers and holds her hands stretched out above her and declares nice! and then I
dry the toes in a clean dishcloth but before we stick them back on her feet we count them like
one two two three one two ten and then I stick them back on with nothing but love and devotion
but that is the stickiest stuff and I tell her so as I’m doing it I say edie love is the stickiest stuff
and she says yep and I say did you already know that? and she says yep and we blow on her toes
together to help them dry faster and then she gets up and runs and runs and runs

—

Mia Sitterson is a postpartum doula and dancer moving and grooving in Washington, DC. Her poetry finds roots in her queer, Jewish, Cuban-American body. For the last six years, she has run a biweekly poetry group out of her living room; over two hundred people have written poems in this space.