My small body prayed for your large body to be freed from prison; come back home, be my New York City father. We were puppies in a pile, mother, brother, and I, left drooling for treats you tempted us with then failed to deliver. Our faces flushed when we thought you were coming home, popped like pricked balloons when you didn’t show up. Sunday mornings, we dressed up, waiting for you to drive us through the countryside in a borrowed Cadillac from grandpa to moo-moo at the cows and smell green grass. 5 pm, still waiting, our faces flattened, wrinkled from the grainy wooden floor. It was almost dark outside. Mom told us, change into play clothes.

I was five when you took me to see Carmen, let me twirl in her long drapes, wrapped like a secret spy, bought me a black-and-white checkered winter coat with a fur hand muff to place both fists in. You purchased my first pocketbook: a small trapezoid with gunmetal clips on top and a pink material rose on the front. Carmen snuck a tube of her red lipstick inside for me. She had two miniature dogs, Blackie and Brownie, whom you nuzzled in your coat pocket. Sometimes you took them home to visit me and my brother. I loved little doggies. We only got to keep our special Princess dog for two weeks before Mom gave her away because she was wild and chewed our furniture to bits. I cried and quietly promised myself to always look for Princess when we went for walks on the streets. Mom asked about my new winter clothes, the pocketbook, and the tiny doggies, so I told her about your friend Carmen.

I hid in the coat closet when mom yelled at you and said divorce; a word that meant our ceiling would crumble, our walls would cave, we would be poor, and you wouldn’t love us anymore. Before divorce destroyed us, you were taken away by policemen in handcuffs on a September morning when my brother and I were at school. Grandpa scrunched us on his lap and said, If your Dad talks at trial, there are men who say they’ll hurt you. We weren’t allowed to speak with strangers or get in any cars, even with friends.

And no more visits with Carmen. Mom said she heard at trial that Carmen was a prostitute with a small child and a baby in her belly. They would be taken away from her if she didn’t speak up about your plans to get the gun. I didn’t know what a prostitute was, and I loved babies as much as doggies, so I cried about this too, and couldn’t figure out how to find the child and baby in her belly if they were taken away. I was still looking for my dog Princess on every sidewalk and city block I passed.

On my first visit to see you in prison, I took my pocketbook with the pink rose. Guards made me unlock the metal clips that were sealing in my hopes so the purse could be searched and all contraband confiscated until my visit ended. I asked, What does contraband and confiscate mean? The stern uniformed guard told me they need to take away knives and escape plans I might hide in there. Each small fingertip of mine was placed on an inkpad, then pressed on a white cardboard rectangle to make prints of their secret designs.

When we were called inside the visiting room to see you, I had to pee, but held it in, squeezing my thighs and pelvis tight at the shock of seeing a guard unlock metal cuffs from your six-foot-three, slumped-over frame, your gray eyes, a set of leaky windowpanes in the rain. It seemed like mom and brother disappeared, and it was only you and me sitting on either side of a diamond-linked fence. There was a green painted counter and a boarded barrier at our feet, so I couldn’t reach you with my shiny patent leather shoes. Above that, only what you called the chicken wire fencing all the way up to a high ceiling. No touching, said the guard, so I licked the paintbrush tip of my thin braid, beyond the rubber band, and placed it through the inside of a diamond for you to kiss. When the guard wasn’t watching, I got brave and stuck my pinky through the fencing. Then we curled pinkies together around sticky metal. That was the most we touched for the rest of my life.

I peed for a long time after that visit. Something inside me ruptured as I walked out the metal gates and turned to see the thick penitentiary concrete walls. I heard doggies barking and babies wailing in my head, but couldn’t find them anywhere. It was like they were trapped in the walls. I gripped the material rose on my pocketbook. It felt like flimsy paper about to tear.

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Sandra Beth Levy (she/her) is a retired psychologist who passionately practiced the healing art of psychotherapy for over forty years and is now pursuing her dream of immersion in creative writing and spoken word performance. She raised two biracial poet sons while honoring her Jewish-feminist identities. Her social and personal histories weave their way through her writing as she explores intricacies of love, loss, aging, and awe of nature. She has won local poetry slams, and published poems with Anomaly Poetry, Small Gems Press, Arcana Poetry Press, A Curious Moon, The Vagabond’s Verse – Weekly Verses, and SHINE poetry series. Find her on Instagram @slevy43.