I love when people share memories of you
I have forgotten. Like when your big sister
remembered the time we visited your aunt’s
new home, and you, six years old and unstoppable,
were entranced by the decorative glitter glued
to her walls, and while the rest of us were nearby
making food, you stood there in the hallway
and picked at the sparkles until there was a pile
of shine on the floor. “And she was so mad,”
remembers your sister. The memory glimmers
in me like the first stars at dusk, barely there,
but becoming more clear by the moment,
then shining and bright. Yes, that’s what it’s like when
old memories return. I get a shining sliver
of you back. Like finding some constellation
that was always there, I had just forgotten where
to look, and now it’s so present, so true,
I can use its light to navigate my nights.
Posts Tagged ‘memory’
Child
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged child, memory, truth on November 22, 2025| 4 Comments »
You will sit naked in the center
of a circle, aware others are watching.
They’ll have white hair and point at you in delight.
You will reach beneath a fence to steal
something small, a black plastic man
with a coat that ripples in unseen wind.
Guilt guarantees the toy never brings you joy.
You name him The Stranger. He will never fit in.
Another time, you will tell your parents you wrote
your own name, then point to the teacher’s
perfect block letters. They will see through your lie,
make you sit in the corner and face the wall.
Eventually you learn being at ease with nakedness
is a superpower. Eventually you learn to delight
in the fact you will always need a teacher.
Strange
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gift, memory, paradox, quince on November 8, 2025| 9 Comments »
So darn ugly, the quince,
pockmarked and shriveling,
lumpy and mottled,
sloughing their thin gray fuzz,
but from across the room,
I smell them, intensely sweet,
exotic and milky, rose-like,
honeyed, apple-ish.
They’re like a bowl of painful
memories I’d rather not look at
and yet find myself nose-deep
in them by choice, astonished
at how complex it all is.
Ache. Beauty. Repulsion.
Desire. What most moves us
is seldom simple. Or perhaps
it is simple as this: The world
is full of the strangest gifts.
Like the scent of the quince
floral and tart. Like that
memory I once ran from
that now is treasure
to my heart.
How He Loved to Fish
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dad, daughter, father, fishing, love, memory on November 5, 2025| 4 Comments »
Dad could barely walk,
but put a rod in his hand
and pass him a bag full
of tackle and bait
and that man could traverse
over mountains or swamps
to get to the place
where the bite was on.
I remember him reeking
of fish, his thick hands
covered in slime,
his smile wide as a river
is long. He was chatty,
then, giggling each time
he’d feel the sharp tug
on the line, whistling out
a long ooooooh-eeee as he
reeled and pulled.
How he thrilled in every
part of the act—
the planning, the waiting,
the catching, the gutting, the eating.
Years later, I can almost
scent it here on my hand—
the pungent, sour smell
brings me back to when Dad
was most alive,
not those hours in the ER,
not those years in the chair
swaying back and forth
to dance with his pain, no,
a straight path to those days when
his eyes were bright with ecstasy
and the current of his joy so strong
it still carries me, even now.
Ongoing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, joy, laughter, memory on August 20, 2025| 1 Comment »
I don’t know how, after your son has died,
you go on, she said, and I don’t know either,
but this morning, I walked through the field
where he used to drive the Gator, pulling his
friends behind him in an old red canoe, all
of them howling their laughter, shrieking their joy,
and I stood in that empty field and wept, my heart
in halves, and a scrap of old joy slipped through
the crack, and I laughed, tears streaming, I laughed.
1990
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, humility, memory, summer on June 10, 2025| 4 Comments »
That was the summer I picked up a sex worker
on East Colfax, confusing her upturned thumb
for hitchhiking. Imagine her surprise
when she got into my mom’s silver Volvo and saw me,
a girl of twenty in a pink dress I wore
for my theater internship that day.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Oh, you know,” she said, “just down the road.”
This is how I remember it. I warned her
how dangerous that part of town could be
before she told me how her pimp would beat her.
I think we both shocked each other.
She couldn’t imagine why I had picked her up.
To this day, I am grateful she never let me go.
Synaptic Plasticity
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brain, dancing, grandmother, memory, Mimi, synapse on May 11, 2025| 5 Comments »
The way the eagles return to the same nests,
this is the way the mind sometimes returns
to the same memory—as if the mind wings across
all other branching neurons to ever arrive
at the same comfortable place. There are,
of course, many other places to land,
some of them perhaps more beautiful,
more sturdy. Still the mind returns to that
one moment. As tonight when my thoughts again
migrate to the summer evening when my grandmother
and I danced in our old white living room,
a waltz on the radio and her leading me in
the one, two, three, one, two three steps
that she loved. And her hair is white
and pinned up high. And her lips are red
and her nails are red and she smells like
cigarettes and Toujours Moi. There are
millions of other moments we shared,
so why do I always alight here first?
Perhaps for the thrill of her sharing her joy
which so often she did not share.
Tonight, as on that night, the long summer light
streams through the window, weaves into
the nest of memory as if to strengthen it the way
an eagle might weave in new sticks, new lichen,
new grass, so that the next time the mind
wants to arrive here, the memory will be waiting,
even softer, even more home than before.
One Bite
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, lemon, memory, taste on March 15, 2025| 2 Comments »
lemon cookie—
even as I pucker
I snuggle into a memory
Letter to My Son, Over Three Years Since He’s Gone
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, grief, love, memory, mother, siblings, son on March 5, 2025| 9 Comments »
You would be jealous, I think,
of how your sister is learning trig,
speaking Spanish, playing bridge.
You’d probably tease her, but really,
what you’d be thinking is, She is so cool.
And she is, sweetheart. She’s fun
and silly. Like you. Only like her.
We talk about you, of course.
Just this weekend, we remembered
how once you said if a 99-pound person
ate a one-pound burger, they
would be one percent burger.
I wonder what percent of your sister
is grief? And what percentage love?
Tonight a girl asked her if she had any siblings.
She said, yes, a brother. When the girl
asked her how old you were, she told her
the truth. That you were seventeen
when you died. What a terrible gift
to learn how to say the hardest things straight.
I can’t help but think if you are watching her,
you, too, must be in awe of who she’s becoming.
Oh, how we learn to grow from whatever soil
we’ve been given. I do not pretend to know
how this works. I only know she
is learning to transform ache into beauty,
nightmare into dream. I only know
I long for her to know love from you
the way a garden feels loved by sun, by rain.
When I Listen Tonight to Slack Key Guitar
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged memory, mothering, self love, self-forgiveness on February 1, 2025| 10 Comments »
I am again in a small blue room
with the bedroom windows open wide
and the breeze is alive in the thin
white curtains and the boy in the crib
doesn’t cry as he lies on his back
and my eyes are closed as I try
to be boring so he will sleep.
The music on the radio is smooth
and full, soothing and warm.
I had never heard slack key before.
Eighteen years later, it is easy
to feel the sweetness of those shaded
hours in a way I couldn’t then.
But I do not chastise that younger self
for not perceiving beauty. She was
tired. And hurting. A gaping wound.
I don’t lecture her about how
she should be better. I just hum
to the music now familiar and love her.
The notes shimmer like forgiveness in the air.