Fwd: The Problem

is
not
your
body
\your
body
is not
a problem
|radiated oceans
redwoods burning|
these are problems
/living on credit
is a concept
not a problem
|except that ideas
manifest
physically|
\a credit card
can buy peanut butter
milk
is real
credit
less so\
your body
is / not an idea
which
can
change
or
break
or
sing
someone
else
to
sleep

Thoughts on Myself While Traveling

June – August

// I’m in bed beside a sleeping toddler / my dear husband, in the kitchen, slips back off level, brittle, bemoaning spilled coffee / I’m naked with a sponge in the dark before dawn, cleaning the coffee while he tells me not to and cries // yesterday, walking the trails above Pacifica, fog moving in layers with patches of sun, he picks up snail shells, small, tiny beads in the palm of his hand, he asks me to notice the coils, one flat and coiling outward, the other taller, coiling up / we need ways to tell different kinds of shells apart so we know which family of snails live here and if there are more or less since the drought. if there are more, it’s because something else died to make way for them.

***

I heat leftovers and put them into Tupperware. boil corn and put it in a plastic bag. bring forks.carry the heavy basket along the shore. we find stones to throw in the water and a pink balloon in the grass. soon we find a thin rope in the dunes. her father gets a stick and ties the balloon to the stick and now we have a toy that will blow in the wind and is pink. I know we’ve taught her to love pink, but I don’t know how. it’s like an animal got into the house. we know what it’s looking for, but we don’t know which door we left unguarded.

***

I didn’t write back because the daycare closed for a week and then we gave up and went to Davis, and even though my DH only worked for a couple hours each day, I was doing childcare. When he was out running before dawn, I was getting her back to sleep by holding her in my arms. Once she was asleep, I knew it was too close to morning to put her down. I thought of the many things I could be doing. I noted which of my limbs were most likely to lose circulation, I thought about sleeping sitting up, which is possible, even unavoidable sometimes. There’s a person I could have been, and that person would have written back to you.

***

if I don’t write this part, nothing else will make sense / that day, we were getting on bikes to meet friends at the playground / he didn’t want to go but maybe felt like he had to / so instead of not going, he was complaining and picking fights, and then we were outside the garage with our helmets waiting for him while he was inside thrashing things and breaking them, and I didn’t want Jojo to see and I was angry, so I slammed the door, hard. which knocked things off the shelf, including glass jars that shattered. we stood looking at the closed door, hearing the sharp, high-pitched crinkling of the shards sprinkling across the concrete floor. a chiming flourish slowing, fading out. this broke his rage. calmed him completely. he opened the door. we lifted the bikes over the broken glass. he said to Jojo, let’s go to the swings, and we went.

***

my mother’s house has lush grass for blocks and blocks and is a plane ride away from the DH and everything that I’m trying to keep secret / do I want someone to tell me when to leave? / my mother’s saying, good morning sweet pie, the way she has all of my life. she’s saying, the cicadas never came down from the trees, later, Maya explains, they came, it just wasn’t the way she remembered // breathe in the air on the porch / be right here with this little girl splashing in a tub on the patio / walking across the grass, my mother telling me, she’s darling.

Matter of Accident n. /ˈmædər əvˈæksədnt/

a commodity chosen as the equivalent for all other commodities/ he explains, I got me a laying hen (a girlfriend with an income) (it doesn’t matter what kind) Abdi visits our house, asks the DH, how’d you get her to move in with you, didn’t you have to offer her family three cows or something? joking (mostly) part of her illness means losing her job, no longer being able to put those two boys through school. so now there’s two unfurlings. the one and then the other. a matter of accident, what we use as money, how we count and are counted

Navigating by Stars v. /ˈnævəˌɡeɪt baɪ stɑː/

an umbrella open in the house is bad luck /but I let her play with it anyway /let her sleep in her clothes /let her fall asleep on top of me / waiting for her breath to level before I can roll out from under her /decide to sleep or join her father /from this warm bed to his abyss /the boat is wood so it floats /even in the storm /even with some water seeping in/ there’s a current. dawn comes. the hydrangeas open. the hummingbird hums so quietly we don’t even hear it