Spring

Eva stood in the doorway holding petals in her palm. Cherry blossoms, mamma, she said though they weren’t, but they were pink, and the sun was coming in, which it has been doing this spring, all spring, coming in rich and full. But that can’t be true; maybe it’s just this moment that it’s so rich and full. Of course there’s been rain: it is, after all, April, and the other day at the discount store, the one on the corner that Cody threatened to burn down the summer he quit smoking, when I was buying things I didn’t want to buy, things you have to buy right after you have a baby, and the baby was starting to fuss, Eva suddenly looked up at me with her teary blue eyes, and I knew it was coming, as if she had been holding it in forever, and she just peed and peed while I watched the darkness spread across her pink leggings and run down into her Hello Kitty rain-boots, and since I don’t remember arguing about how there was no need for rain-boots on a perfectly sunny day, and since I do remember, once we got outside, taking off each of her boots and pouring them into the gutter where a tiny stream already ran, there must have been rain. It must have been slicking these dusty Brooklyn streets. It must be responsible for all this mad blooming.