Terrarium

Yesterday, I chased Eva with a Q-tip,
and finally caught her, pinned

her down, like some exotic, menacing
butterfly, my knees on her elbows--

Just let me clean your ears. I growled.
She kicked, cried. But it was before then

when I went to find the Q-tips
that I thought, Sarah, of you.

They were on the highest shelf
(ears not being our top priority);

I had removed them from their blue box,
and they were in a glass jar, a jar

that had once been a homemade terrarium,
a gift from a friend who had driven

twenty-seven hours with two sick boys
and a moody man just to sleep on my floor.

It's its very own eco-system, she said.
Reaching into that jar, I thought of child-you,

of how child-you must have worn her hair,
of how child-you must have read Ramona Quinby,

and then there was the child-you (pensive) who
was told of her mother's death, the child-you

who must have stood on the other side
of doors, the child-you who might, one night,

have gone looking for Q-tips, pulling out drawers,
ripping through cabinets. Don't touch it,

my friend told me. It seemed, at first,
this Missouri-made world might really thrive,

might bloom impossibly. My heart ached.
Maybe I held Eva down harder than

I would have. Finally, she gave in. I swept the tip
all around. Some girls don't have anyone

to clean their ears, I told her. How do you think
that would feel? By then, she had wriggled

her way free. I stood there alone, feeling the heat
of the light that pressed in on our windows.