And After

anticipation
spools like a movie
tells what happens
next

the wind scribbles
this book jumps up
and is a flat stone
ready for skipping

my thoughts
rise like mist
your touch
is rain across me

longing storms, bursts
--a vigorous birth--
thoughtless, saving a life
= staying alive

_

References Have Been Checked

Breakfasts have been a lot more leisurely since the semester has ended. So leisurely that Li'l A has to be shepherded to school before Baby A has even dipped into her cereal or her cheesy eggs. Before she has finished telling me every single detail of last night's dreams. 

So Li'l A went off to school, and Baby A is dawdling at the kitchen table.


Baby A: I don't want milk or eggs anymore.
(Accusingly) YOU don't eat eggs or drink milk!

Me: I don't now. But when I was a kid. I drank milk all the time and ate an egg every day.

Baby A: No, you didn't!


Me: I did, actually!


Baby A: Ok. Call Ammama [grandma, my mom] let me ask her.

I initiated an international call and was duly exonerated.

_

It Will Be Warm (Till November)

Footprints dissolve in the mud

feet: fleet, sudden muddy armada

six-seven songs thicken my head

warm prayers like stars, pleated breezes

Lost: can we care about mapped lines--

those echoes happening like strewn veins 

open the bruised year, count what is sent

unpin hope--find it escape, flying like a signal

_

Beauty Binge

So Liz Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love?) has a new-ish curiosity shop.

I want to call her out on further exploiting exotic locales and people, but--almost despite myself--I am charmed by the wholesome, self-deprecating blurbs on the store's website.

(And shhh. Yes, I secretly want to wander around in that warehouse all week-end long with a fat, juicy bank account.)

_

Girl-Talk (Restroom edition)

Last Saturday was spent with cousins N and T.

And in The Boonshoft Museum restroom, Baby A and I spent a rather long time:

Part 1

Baby A: pssSSssssshhhh. (Making the start-peeing sound. She'd make a good toilet trainer!)

Me: (I oblige.)

Part 2

Baby A: I washed my hands all by myself, Mama.

Me: Cool! Yay!

Wait. (Suspiciously) How did you reach the soap? Wasn't it too high for you?

Baby A: (Agreeably) Yeah, it was!

So I just made some bubbles by bumping my hands.

Fin.


__

New Keys

If my craft is uneven
I can blame the water

For these small rehearsals
at faintly unfamiliar doors

_

Mothers' Day 2011

I was sad by the end of Mothers' Day, and I don't really know why.

It started out well enough having brunch and mimosas and karaoke fun with bestie L and her family until late in the afternoon while Big A slept off his night shift. Evening plans were to go out to the old familiar Chinese restaurant for Mother's Day dinner with all the A's and my MIL. I'd even picked out matching presents for Big A to give his mom and me. And I was all excited about !everything! until my food came.

Then my food came. And it sucked. And I remembered how ALL the veggie food at this restaurant sucks. How I HATE this restaurant. That it is MIL's favorite restaurant. Not mine. And Big A was sitting next to MIL instead of next to me (as he always does, maybe because my kids were on either side of me?). Oh. The tragedy.

How could I possibly be so petty?

On the other hand, I did pick out awesome necklaces for me and MIL (seed pearls with asymmetrical gold-leaf feathers). Instead of flowers for MIL, I picked out a decorative pot of hen and chicks at the nursery. I loved the name that seemed so apropos for Mothers' Day, the way the tight, perfect floral whorls look and the fact that she could keep it practically forever.

_