Some Afternoons When Nobody Was Fighting my mother took out walnuts and chocolate chips. My sister and I plunged our fingers in flour and butter smoother than clay. The sweetness on our skin, the pale dough oozing between our fingers. While the house filled with blond bars rising, we licked the beaters with our tongues, the spatula sweeter than a lover's tongue might be later. My mother in her pink dress with black ballerinas circling its bottom put on the Victrola, Cab Calloway maybe singing Minnie the Moocher or Russian balalaika or the Don Cossack dancers and my mother tucked her dress up so it was like their tunics, kicked her legs up in the air and before we were old enough to be embarrassed, my sister and I pranced thru the living room, a bracelet around her. She was our Pied Piper and we were lured like the children of Hamlin, circling her as close as the dancers on her hem Lyn Lifshin I was so close to my mother I didn't know how I would go on without her - Bambi terrified me. But at 11, I knew I never wanted a child. Never wavered. I do, though, baby my 20-plus-year-old Abyssinian cat, Memento. If you've any comments on this poem, Lyn Lifshin would be pleased to hear from you. Or you can visit http://www.lynlifshin.com.