Almost May

April did not drown us, and that in itself seems worth celebrating. There was no tiny blue boat that whisked us helplessly down the Gowanus and into the Atlantic, further and further out, until we were only blue on blue on sky and then that was blue too. Instead we were a wash of fallen cherry blossoms and mandarin peel and memory. These are the things I've been thinking about: poems (this one) and dying and how Grandpa used to let us eat ice cream for breakfast; the museum in midtown with the deep ceilings; breakfast with Tess and her soft-boiled eggs; sidewalk mangoes with hot sauce; Sanj teaching me to use chopsticks when we were in our twenties and sushi was infinitely exciting; street corners and Sky City and boatcars; that drive into the mountains to see Mama Heaton because we knew she wouldn't make it to Christmas; how far Hawaii is; how cold the wind can be.

Eva has started singing, and so afternoons, I dig deep, surprised by the number of songs I remember. It's amazing how much we carry inside.

Eva's Words

Home, moon, bubble.

Day 490

Day of white flower in hair,
of first Easter egg hunt, first skinned knee,
first ice cream cone to make it better

Labors of Love

One of my students has just completed the construction of one thousand paper cranes. He's a soft-spoken boy with glasses who admits that he loved church basement Ping-Pong long before he loved anything else.

The birds, he tells me, are kept in freezer-sized Ziploc baggies in groups of one hundred. Last week, in his essay about art critic John Berger, he confessed that he'd created all one thousand birds for a girl. He didn't mention if he had ever given the birds to the girl, only mentioned that after a while, they weren't birds at all, they were something else entirely.

Then the weekend came, and Eva--very early Saturday--woke up with a fever. She was hot to the touch, and I was bleary-eyed, and I kept whispering to her that I was sorry--not for anything but for everything--and at least half a dozen times I went in to put my hand on her warm back, and I pressed a cold washcloth to the soles of her feet and measured out Motrin and sang about stars. Her fevers affect me like nothing else; somehow they contain every illness and playground injury, every paper-cut and heartbreak; they make me weepy and lonely, and every time I go in to press my wrist to her neck, I get more scared and more grateful.

When I was 20 or 22, I loved a boy who left me poems everywhere, tiny poems scrawled on torn-up pieces of paper. He left them in the medicine cabinet and the butter-dish, in my apron pockets and old notebooks. For years, I discovered them. They were beautiful in their way, and for a long time I wondered if I hadn't loved the boy quite enough or long enough, but by then he was gone--making t-shirts in Queens, someone said--and love, then, seemed to matter far less than time.

I think of my student and his thousand paper cranes, and I want to write him an email:

Dear B.--
Eva suffered a fever,
and I fell into an old & magical loop.

I've been thinking about your birds.
Please don't give them all away.
Keep at least one for yourself.

N.

When I was a girl--5 or 6--I found a seagull feather in the parking lot of the Sanitary Fish Market. I remember loving that feather, carrying it everywhere and sucking on its end. I'm not sure now, but probably, I thought that it could make me fly. Still, somehow, I knew that it was forbidden and I'd wait until I was alone before bringing it to my mouth. I think it was my first great privacy: the first thing I really kept from my mother, my first labor of love.

How We Spend Our Days

Winter Still

I am bone-tired, child--fractured--
split from the base of my neck
to the strange quiet place you have carved in me.

What I Don't Know

I don't know if a vegan brownie and a handful of Ruffles and two tortillas microwaved with cheese equal dinner; or how you sleep so peacefully; or the names of very many constellations; or if I can remember, I mean really remember, what it was like to be a girl, to be eight or fifteen, to do back-bends and dress up like a cave woman and not be so practiced-practiced with my lip gloss and my hellos; and, frankly, I don't know what it means to be able to write and teach and think and be a mother and a wife and a friend, not all at once anyway; and so I do what I can, which right now is not very much; it's just this; (at least I'm not checking facebook!); at this moment, I am doing nothing but this (And nibbling crumbs and trying to remember and watching you dream on the video monitor).