Wednesday, February 20, 2013

The Chip

The day starts like this-
my daughter,
in the dream,
disappears. 
And just when I'm about to 
be lost in the wondering of 
where she'd gone, 
she comes back to me, 
says
Mommy, 
I went to the blue place. 
My son,
in the dream,
says, almost flippantly, 
She could always
do that, 
be here 
and then 
there.
And then me,
in the dream,
climbs a precarious hill
in the dark,
and it's littered with
slippery rocks and 
slimy mud
and it's hard work that
takes a long time, 
a considerable effort. 
I reach the top and then
I'm right back at the bottom
once more
face to face with the climb, 
and the rocks, 
and the mud, 
and the dark. 

The day ends like this-
I am making dinner
in the kitchen. 
I am using the cast iron
No. 8 bean pot
that I bought while
out of town, 
the one I had to 
make my mom 
on the phone
convince me to buy. 
But it says No. 8, 
she told me, 
it says bean. 
Today is the first time 
I've used it. 
Besides the No. 8 pot
there's the mixing bowl
that my daughter made me chip. 
And all the while I'm 
cooking
I'm thinking of her, 
The Bean, 
that day she jumped up 
to the counter, 
startled me
so that I
dropped my favorite mixing bowl
and chipped it, 
how sad I was then
and how now I see no
chip, 
only a daughter,
and a day in a kitchen 
that had both
a bowl and a daughter
inside of it. 

They're trying, 
I think sometimes, 
straining to comfort me, 
to show me. 
Mommy, 
no pain. 
Mommy, 
I'm in the blue place. 
And to be fair, 
to try right back, 
I stack up both sides
in my head. 
On one side there's 
a memory even in the bowls, 
a daughter who
has no pain anymore and 
lives inside a color, 
a love that 
cares nothing for
boundaries, and here or there
but 
only for me. 
On the other side, 
there is no 
daughter, 
no son, 
not even a bowl. 
On this side, 
there's only me 
and the chip. 

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