Cinnamon, Spice, and Everything Nice

She runs right into me. "I was cooking!" she squeaks. "Cinnamon sugar sticks!" the words melt together, sticky and sweet.
I lean in toward her and inhale, "Mmm...you smell like cinnamon." She squeals in delight.
"You smell like chocolate," she tells me.
"I do?" I smile and tilt my head.
"No." She presses her little face into my shirt and rethinks. "You smell like oatmeal."
"Really?" I ask, thinking oatmeal's not a bad thing to smell like. Oatmeal smells nice and warm. Oatmeal smells like home.
"Maybe there's chocolate in your brain?" she giggles.
"In my brain?" I tease, "I would sure have to love chocolate a lot for it to be in my brain!"
"Maybe there's chocolate in your nose?" She can't stop laughing.
"My nose?! Why would there be chocolate in my nose?!"
"Guess what's in my nose?" she asks.
"I don't know. What's in your nose?"
She climbs into my lap, cups her hands around her mouth, and leans in to my ear to whisper "boogers" before rolling on the floor with laughter. And it's is sticky and sweet and nice and warm.

Mother's Day

There’s a boy. He’s stuck in bed— a giant tumor stuck in his brain, mom stuck by his side. He is sick and swollen. There will be no healing happening here, just so you know. No miraculous recovery. I’m doing what I can to keep him comfortable as his mom watches on, aging exponentially, gray and tired beyond her years. In the evening, the room is tense, brows furrowed, jaws clenched, air heavy. But during the deepest part of the night, it’s different. The boy sleeps soundly in bed, his mom sleeps soundly on the couch, and I stand in the space between. Her mouth blooms into a smile as she slumbers. She giggles like a girl, soft and carefree. The boy answers with a smile, exhales peaceful and easy with a low laugh. This continues, the love and happiness flowing between them like a conversation without words, like an understood embrace, like a breeze, like music, like light. I hold my breath and stay very still, willing some of this goodness to stick to me as it passes through. He died on mother’s day. I hold my breath and stay very still, willing all the goodness of the world for his mother.