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.
just take three kids,
toss in ten more,
stir up some screams,
splash in a bit of sunlight,
add ice-cold water,
a dose of shade,
and bake for three hours.
pull your party
out of the oven
and serve warmth.
before this great institution
you have a tabula rasa—
you could start fresh,
show the world innovation,
speak the language of the plants.
but in your usual
conglomeration of unspoken words,
you have filled your slate
with water-sucking weeds
stealing the words from native beauty.
if words could work
i could buy the right food
food to feed them
food to nurture the Earth
rather than strip her of
her natural beauty
if words would work
we could respond yes
throw our three-dollar-dinner
into the wastebasket
and forget the one week and
ten dollars left till payday
if words could cure
the tears would be smiles
and they could have
the ice cream cones of their dreams
instead of the cheap flavorless popsicles
that melt before they can get a taste
of the world with my words.
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.
i cannot replicate the complex crest
nor mimic la bandera de España.
i cannot be the arms of your mother
or speak coherently her tongue.
i can only pour in the ingredients,
spin the mixer of all we desire,
and place before you in red and yellow
everything your presence means to me.
i cannot say in words what the cake will tell
in so many sweet remembrances,
so many little tastes that sparkle
like the teardrops in the corners of her eyes.
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
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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