LAST PHOTOGRAPH WITH MY SISTER

 

I don't know why this photo, the last that

we took together, is muted in grays and sepias,

as if the West Coast sunlight was somehow

being filtered through an antique lampshade,

or a scrap of newsprint held up to window glass.

You look so small on the bench beside me,

bony shoulders folded into themselves,

your kind face hovering somewhere between

a smile and a vague sense of surprise.

Your matchstick legs could barely hold you,

not for long, your balance swimming

in and out like some uncertain dance partner,

seemingly at random, Yet you insisted on

walking me through Chinatown, buying

a handknit sweater and chocolates for your niece,

those red paper lanterns suspended across

every street, as if the streets themselves,

narrow and directionless, were merely

an afterthought; you insisted on seeing the

enormous Christmas tree lighting up the wharf,

sea lions barking their hunger, as always,

for all to hear, each blubbery mass and voice

calling out indecipherable from the next.

We are waiting, in this moment, for one last

taxi to the airport, as ordinary as that.

But the sun was much warmer than it looks,

the palm trees behind us alive and swaying gently,

while the snow back home, three feet of it,

was a few short hours away. I can't blame you

for not missing it, not missing it at all.

SITTING WITH MY SISTER

 

When I received the news today of your

passing -- a fact somehow known

before I touched the phone to listen --

I wanted only to keep it to myself,

to not speak to anyone during those

long, slow minutes, their silence

demanding only more silence,

their time more time. I wanted to hold

you there, secretly, perhaps selfishly,

between that cave of heart and ribcage,

to hold you suspended like a single breath,

or a seed that I was neither able to

swallow nor spit out. I wanted

to hold that moment, hovering like

a thought unformed, not simply

for the sake of sparing others but to sit

with you one last time, as we had

near the end in your tiny apartment,

too quiet for you, and those drugstore

Christmas lights blinking on and off

against the smoky California sun.

I wanted merely to sit with you once more,

just us, before picking up the phone,

handing you back to the world of

the living, the realm you had so recently

left behind, weightless and wordless

now, suddenly beyond the endless

aches and ailments of matter, your absence

only beginning to make itself known.

STORM

 

We are staying up late, my young daughter

and I, to watch and listen -- sleepy

though we are -- to the summer lightning

storm outside, which flashes, matchstick quick

and seemingly at random, across each

small window of the flimsy French doors.

This light show is more exhilarating

to her than the storybooks stacked beside us,

which wait patiently until the world

becomes once more calm and ordinary,

in need of retelling, embellishment, magic.

For now, we wait, counting out loud

the seconds between flicker and crash,

the dark shoulders of trees and angled outlines

of rooftops, lit up for a moment, then gone.

When we startle, it is merely with delight.

We do not speak -- not now, not today --

of the horrors of the television news,

the once unimaginable now commonplace,

school children crouched under desks,

their backpacks cradled close, utilized as shields

against a hail of bullets from every direction.

For now, the danger is far less specific.

For now, we are snug and safe in this

boat of a bed, letting the wild wind-swept

currents surrounding us have their say,

our small, indeterminate patch of the universe

throwing off sparks, shifting, nearly breaking

apart, reminding us of what we live within.

When the storm at last seems spent,

I rise to close the curtains, our plastic moon

of a nightlight standing in for the one

which we cannot see. But we know it's there,

as the stars are there, and the far away sun

of tomorrow, like all good things,

and it's enough -- for now, for now --

to rest, at ease, in that simple knowing.

FEATHERS OF A DOVE

 

How many trips did we make back then

to the hardware store, as summer

leaned lazily into autumn; how many

dusky shades of blue and gray

holding their secret oceans of light

were mixed on our behalf, a seemingly

endless variety of color swatches

laid out like narrow, unframed windows,

opening onto a bright coastal morning

which no artist could ever have gotten right?

How elegant and whimsical their names,

dreamed up, I imagine, in some drab

and lifeless boardroom, and labeled here

in practiced script: English Chamomile,

Whispering Mist, Feathers of a Dove.

We read them aloud just to hear their music,

the unassuming romance they promised,

the time we longed for most of all.

How many thoughtless brushstrokes

covered the wall at the end of that narrow

hallway, as if the smallest of decisions

could make all the difference for us?

How many weeks before the baby arrived

to parents who could not agree

even on this, our days together already

beginning to flutter from our grasp, restless

and unfinished, all but flying away?

THE MOON IN MY HAND

 

Today I held in my outstretched palm

a smooth, flat piece of moon stone,

black, ordinary, impenetrable,

nothing you would consider otherworldly,

nor containing even the smallest

fragment of mystery or light.

Nothing asking to be named or known,

merely a door opening into further darkness.

When my daughter was very small

she would exclaim in joyous wonder

from the balcony, "The moon! The moon!,"

greeting her nightly friend once again.

But this, this cannot be the moon,

I think. This is mere flint, shale, asphalt,

chimney soot swept and hardened

to a coin of no value here below.

No miner would bother to claim it.

But a child can easily see light where

our eyes cannot, can spark a new

world from nearly anything within reach.

We add our stone to the fish bowl

full of earthly ones, our own small piece

of moon, which we read has traveled

hundreds of thousands of miles

to be right here beside us, where we rest

and dream another day into waking.

DEAREST BULLY

 

I can still feel the rap of your knuckles,

brother, striking against my own,

stinging, bruising, like four faceless

skulls declaring their dominance.

I can still feel the weighted air shifting

between us, I who was never quite

quick enough to slip from beneath your

reach, and rarely, if ever, managed to connect.

There are things I cannot pretend

to miss -- the swift punch to the shoulder,

the ever-elaborate wrestling holds,

a perfect pearl of milky spit dangling,

like a lazy thought, above my face.

I do not miss the ghost you pretended

to be, silent, tugging, inch by creeping inch,

at the foot of our childhood bed.

Your ghost is real now, free to wander

room to room. And I no longer fear,

though the world you left compels us to.

I miss you in the ways you were soft,

the gentle humor you held close,

the vulnerable boy hidden from view.

I miss the moments you cried, unashamed.

Tonight, as always, I kiss my daughter,

let her snuggle in, as she wraps her

small fingers around my crooked thumb,

drifting effortlessly again into sleep.

It's the kind of calm that I live for,

and would fight this whole world to keep.

SOAP

 

God only knows what casual blasphemy

or stubborn refusal of chore had tumbled out,

but there I was, a child of four, made

to kneel upon the smoke-yellow linoleum

of the bathroom floor, a fresh white bar

of soap clenched between my teeth.

I was instructed only to wait. To speak directly

to the Lord and await his forgiveness.

I cannot say whether it came, or not, only that

the wait dragged on for what felt like hours,

a thousand years to the Creator being one day.

The soap did not make my mouth feel

any cleaner, nor make what came out of it

lighter, every uncertain lisp and stutter floating

like bubbles up toward the heavens.

I tasted only shame, a chemical bitterness

lasting the whole length of the day.

I understood words to be weighted things,

meant to be avoided whenever possible,

and God the Father, forever holding

his tongue, to always be listening,

always ready to silence with the back of a hand,

a sword, or a book thrown suddenly open.