Snapshots: Say Cheese! The World Is Watching

SNAPSHOTS: SAY CHEESE!
THE WORLD IS WATCHING
CARA CILENTO

SNAPSHOTS: SAY CHEESE
THE WORLD IS WATCHING
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of any license permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locations, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Published by: Taint My Cat Productions Author: Cara Cilento
Book Design by: Cuddle Bear
ISBN-13: 978-1-7909-1951-2
Distributed by:
Taint My Cat Productions PO Box 41
Neptune, NJ 07754
To contact Cara Cilento email flaginagrande@gmail.com
© 2019 Cara Cilento
To the past and to the present, to the Samson and Delilahs, to the tourist and the tour guides and
those afraid to take the excursion.
To my friends, family, and children —
here's to a hopeful future.
May you always have the bravery to speak your truth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cara Cilento grew up in a small suburban North Jersey town. Her family of origin did not. Cara's grandparents were a combination of Italian immigrants and first generation Italian-Americans. They were a close-knit family that lived in Newark, NJ and who pushed academic and personal success. Most of all they pushed assimilation.
Cara Cilento is a divorced mother of two boys. She has been a speech therapist for over twenty years in various public schools. Currently, she lives in suburban North Jersey on her own terms. Cara defines her own personal success as living her truth and not what is expected of her. Snapshots is her first published work which has taken a lifetime of experiences—traumatic, joyful, abusive, healing and reaffirming—as her muse.

SNAPSHOTS: SAY CHEESE
  ONE
The Facts
A therapist told me once
That during session I stated a lot of facts about my life But I didn't share how I felt about them
The facts
Everyone has a lot to say about facts
I mean... just the fact ma'am
And that's a fact, Jack
But my therapist wasn't named Jack
And my therapist didn't think I was made of facts
And she didn't want me to just state them
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SNAPSHOTS: SAY CHEESE
THE WORLD IS WATCHING
    Because facts are for math and I was made from two parents who went to school to get out of the ghetto
Who tried to forget their last name had too many vowels in it for the neighborhood they moved into
That I was born out of cultural pressure
From women of past generations who spoke in accents and broken English
Who huddled around stone ovens and kneaded bread with withered fingers and calloused knuckles
I was put on the path
To be a strong, independent, and smart woman
The high road
The road less traveled for women in my family
And without a map to navigate how to get there
Because women were like brooms
You keep them behind the door and only take them out when you need them
Because women only get married and pregnant anyway Because two plus two is four
And four plus four is eight
The eight donuts I consumed in my depression
The sum of all my parts expanding exponentially
While waiting for these facts to materialize or fade away
But they didn't fade
They burned bright red
And scarred a huge rope like keloid scar around my neck This noose I wear to hang myself in these facts
That are easier to talk about than to think about
And sure as hell not feel anything about because
They are facts
How do you feel a fact?
And who would want to?
89

TWO
Mama Bird... Baby Bird
What did you feed me? Mouth open wide
I beg for the sustenance
You choose to fill me with Partially digested in your crop You ate some too
As it had been fed to you Before you learned to fly Deep within your crop
11