She was so tiny I would give her anything:

sweets, cinnamon or lemon, thick puddings,

strawberries. I would give her my arm, a smile,

kisses on the forehead, my rocking frame beside her.

I said it was okay. Wasn’t it? I said I loved her

and rubbed her bony back, her swollen feet.

We would play with lipstick and lotions.

Your dry skin, I’d say. Her hair, the brush,

the silly way they would braid her into a girl

but I wanted her hair long and loose, waves

spilling down her neck. Her sunken eyes, her warnings,

go now. Her greetings, you’re finally here.

 

It was a long while and it was yesterday.

It was a year and a mile, a daily escape,

a treat, a burden, a weight. We walked

to the exotic swans and watched them preen.

We compared shoes and traded clothes. We had

sunlight, we had the gorgeous single red poppy in weeds,

we had a back fence we couldn’t climb,

unplanted flowerbeds, cigarette butts

heeled into sidewalks. What a place.

We were somebody’s sister or another’s enemy.

Sometimes they hadn’t seen us for years,

and we watched them make bright forests

on paper using glitter to imitate the sky.

As if she needed to wrangle words

into a semblance, as if sustenance

 

were a simple matter, a sandwich

day after day and nothing else. As if

 

it were enough and logic

would not erode. As if she could

 

still manage once time had disappeared

and space jigsawed into impossible puzzles.

 

Those aren’t my fingers, she might say

of the writing hand turned in upon itself.

The yard would like to become a forest,

seedlings thick as grass. For a long time

I mowed and pulled. but they have no regard

for lawn and no limit—ponderosa,

spruce, linden, lilac, maple, cherry, oak.

A tricky lot, they shoot up in secret

and dig deep. Why not let them win?

 

Never mind neighbors who keep weeds

from cracks in sidewalks and square-edge

their lawns. These stems have already hardened

into bark. Now, if I trim a branch,

I fear pain in the severed limb. Mostly

I listen. When I ask what the trees want

the answer comes back: love us.