every little thing
i do returns to me in something else: the summer i left i drove to the lake daily to swim in a bikini for the first time in decades, my body neither perfect nor young but mine and i did not care who saw it, i was unashamed and in love with the sun and the water, this is the same drive i take now in this winter to see my mother. the beach town is small and the hospital just down the shoreline from where i sat growing into my new life like an arthropod into its shell. years ago i suddenly knew it was time to learn my mother tongue, thinking that i was doing so to speak to my many ghosts. now, when she won’t (can’t) follow english i speak to her in the soft dialect of her childhood and youth and it opens her like a key. sometimes. but not enough. if you hadn’t heard it ever, you might imagine sharp and craggy consonants like rock rising from the earth; the first time i went back i saw them from the train window, white as they pushed forth from the ground and i thought dragon’s teeth. in my mouth the stones of the words are soft as butter, and every time i stand at her bedside i say her name in the vocative case, i say her name and then i say ok wake up baby, which is what i say to my children every morning, which is one more thing that i do that returns to me again, like a ricochet, or an echo.