i don’t want to think
of your new pink backpack,
your hand-me-down uniform,
or your first steps into kindergarten.
wasn’t it just yesterday
that we swung you in the car seat
into the hospital elevator,
calling you Mythili by mistake?
how can we move from birthday
to first day of school in one week?
it’s too much for this old mom,
this worked-through-baby-years mom.
but it will have to be.
tomorrow’s the big day,
the beginning of the endless
letting goes that you and i must face.
we were strangers.
i was afraid.
you could kill me with your cracks,
i could lose myself in you–
you are high and low,
curvacious and straight-laced,
everything in between.
you think you can beat me,
sometimes with wind,
other times extremities
of heat, cold
stinging my skin,
beckoning me with your endless gray.
we are no longer strangers,
you and i.
friends is too weak a word.
intimate companions
who share the sunrise view,
are tickled first by snow,
who see each other’s secrets.
so i will pound harder,
fearless now,
and pedal all the way down,
gravity and every last crack
you’ve tried to hide
exposed by the love
that has grown between us.
Riona
Five. FIVE. five…
you wear the pink taffeta dress
(pattern handed down
for fifty years)
a gathered waste,
scalloped pockets and sleeves,
plastic pearls to complete the couture.
you jump in and out of fountains,
climb plastic playground steps,
pretend with perfect attitude
(that encompasses all you are)
to blow the absent candles from your cake
we move from playing with new gifts
on hardwood (you offer me a pillow)
to party number two, where
you surround yourself with
breaking-down children and ask
only that i roast you a marshmallow
in the lightning-flash sky
and circle of warmth
you are five.
you dash to the car in the
pitch-black, too-far-from-city night,
your row of new lip balms in palm,
and before you will sleep,
you divide them evenly amongst sisters,
your generous heart more beautiful
than your perfect pink taffeta dress.
Mythili
it’s been a year, and
baby teeth are gone,
replaced by no-finger-sucking
straight white incisors
that have sent Blankey
to a closeted grave
with their grown-up appearance.
you have school friends now
who you won’t let go.
you know the way down the corridors,
will soon show baby sister,
and, as always,
you speak quite frankly
about the condition of your classroom,
the behavior of other students,
and your ability to stay on task.
how could these two adult teeth
bring deeper wisdom
to the little girl
who, from birth,
could already see the world
in a light
the rest of us can’t see?
Isabella
i find pictures of you
at five, six,
(pudgy cheeks and tiny teeth)
and look into your pale hazels,
your over-freckled cheeks,
hold you against me,
your head now at my shoulder,
and i know
i know
(though i’m afraid to write it now)
you are no longer a little girl.
you are my oldest,
will always be first,
will always move from one stage
to another before them,
will be the one to induce the most fear,
the most intense kind of love,
a kind i cannot describe here
(or to them)
one that is shared from those
moments in our babymoon
to those moments now when
you understand what they don’t,
when you give me the look
a reflection of my expression,
you, a shadow of me
who stands at my shoulder,
ready to grow.
girls pose like little models,
even the baby smiles
underneath the bright flashes
(she’s not a baby anymore–
why must i be reminded
that five years
have slipped into oblivion?)
the clouds move in
on a Sunday afternoon,
a semi-quiet house
where they pretend to pick up
while we lie on the couch
reminiscing the twin bed
we shared so many years ago.
(with money clenched
like fists in pockets,
we borrowed furniture,
walked across ant-biting carpet,
washed dishes by hand,
roasted like oily chicken
in the absence of central air)
is it so different now,
our money spilling out
into the screens of tomorrow,
the cool air tickling our skin
as their tweeting songs
remind us of all we have seen,
all we have yet to see?
with closed eyes we see the world
blanketed by senseless screens
absent of real words
imagery we can’t understand
with closed eyes the world sees us
hidden behind doors
lost from human contact
connections we can’t define
with closed eyes we see the world
painted with desire
immersed in ourselves
love we cannot celebrate
it could be the Spanish-English mix
from the nanny’s mouth as we sat in the zoo,
my thoughts of the last day of summer
slipping from my hands
quicker than the tears
my baby cried to sleep with,
or the anger inside
that someone would pay another
for everything i love the most.
it could be the defriending,
his cold absence of words in my presence,
or her emphatic insistence
that eight months is enough
time with her baby
when a thousand years
would not satiate me.
it could be the story i love
coming to a bittersweet end,
or the small voices
absent from my home
on the one day when
i need them most.
but i will never be quite able
to define what haunts me.
Isabella
not a tear or a fear
you smile at adventure
we leave you for four days
and the silence of your absence
is brighter in my mind
than the happy photos
of your smiling face
that they send to us
Riona
words escape you
as you blink back dark eyes
and growing-out bangs,
hiding behind my leg,
your babyhood reemerging
yet
when they are gone
you endlessly request
the words that have filled our hearts
(after moments of hesitation)
they magically conjure from your mouth
Mythili
a pile of donated clothes
sit like humped garbage
on the living room floor
i open bags
sift through worn-out knees
and missing-mate shoes
Oh, I didn’t know new dresses were coming in
your six-year-old crone remarks,
lighting a fire beneath my doubts.
the rain beats down
as we stand in hushed surprise
rush to the endless line of cars
where we wait wait wait
always an adventure
the stars beat down
on a tent without poles
dirt as thick as cream on skins
fires that won’t start
always an adventure
the sun beats down
on a misnavigating device
streets clogged with crowds
underground cracks of hellish heat
always an adventure
my soul beats down
on two jobs, three kids
bills piling like paper mountains
parents who miss what i have:
always an adventure
you will never say
the words that would pop
right out like a sucker gone sour
from the bitterness of my mouth.
instead you click shut the phone,
slide it into your pocket
of quiet reservations,
and tell him
with all the ease of a southern gentleman,
You’re coming home with us
and before the dawn has crept in,
before you’ve taken the girls to swimming,
even before balloon animals conjure
Spanish vocabulary from their mouths,
you remind me again
why
in so few words
yet so many gallant reactions
you are mine,
i am yours.
i thought i hated you
but you have come back in dreams
the holographic star
not letting loose a feathery dress
formed by British hands
instead the skyscrapers formed from stardust
i could call it haunting
(for it wakes me)
but it is a joyous light
leading so many home
in those underground pathways
too hot to touch in my subconscious
you will return
just as i have to you
and we will remember being eight
and the giant Christmas tree over ice
the guards in front of FAO
and the stardust skyscrapers
now rising up from ash
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