The Way You Swallow.

In the way that you speak,
I hear something;
There's a secret,
wrapped up tight with cherry-colored twist,
lying at the bottom of your windpipe...
and it's screaming for me
to reach in
and grab it,
pick it up,
pluck it out of the darkness
that is inside you.

It wants to whisper in my ear
little tales of what it has seen you swallow.
It wants to chirp on my shoulder
little songs about the way you digest
the bites of life...
although it may not have
a whole lot to tell.

You've always been a nibbler.

Loveless.

He was a thick resolve,
quickened breath,
stale, closed, controlling.
She was like an empty vessel,
her voice whispering,
"Fill me."
"Make me whole again."

And so he did.

Our Spring-Time Romance.

I was three years your senior,
it showed in your skin
and in your wide, wide eyes,
and the way you would scowl at my cigarettes.
You picked me flowers
on balmy springs nights.
We drove to the skies
and sat together, like little birds.

Lying naked in our cold campsite,
the whole world floated by.
I chopped wood.
You sang to me in Arabic;
ya 'assal, ya amar, roohi, wa eini.

Sweetheart,
honey,
darling.
Give me all of you, I begged.

I'm sorry I broke apart and crumbled,
after that stagnant phone call,
when I started wearing steel-toed boots.
You, still warm from the Kuwaiti sun,
hoping against hope that all of these dreams
we scrawled in loving haste
in sad, wrinkled letters to oneanother
would actually happen.

Regardless of how late
my mouth met yours,
I thought you should know,
I do remember.

For Nana.

I can remember warm afternoons in your lap, slouched and running my little fingers against green, plastic pearls. You were always smiling. And the taste of flavored juice that came in barrel-shaped containers, blue juice, orange, red. I can still see the blank faces of the dainty geisha that stood proudly along dusty shelves. Wrapped in silk kimonos, paint peeling, flaking to dust.

I can still smell your perfume. I smell you all the time, did especially often when I was pregnant, needed a little kiss. And I can still remember the beautiful jewelry box lying on your vanity, and how it felt to sink my hands into the puddles of color, hard and glittering. I remember your long, shaky hands, brown with age, though they were so strong and always warm. I remember white lace curtains, ear infections, playing Yahtzee before a modest supper of macaroni. I remember your hair all in curls, and your lemon yellow slacks.

And then you began talking to the ceiling, listening to menacing voices that lived in your own head, spoke of rape and murder. I remember the nursing home we brought you to, and your fat, gleeful room-mate. Her insides burst and the whites of her eyes became yellow with the piss that floated around inside of her. I remember playing the flute for you for Christmas and the stale smell of urine. We were losing you.

I remember waking up to the telephone ringing, the message machine picking up, and a quiet nurse apologizing for the bad news. You went in your sleep. I couldn't drag myself out of bed for a week. I was twelve.

The pain never got any better.

But I can feel you with me, can smell your soft perfume, hear your raspy laugh. I felt you like never before the nine months I carried my first son, and the murky months following. You spoke to me in my sleep, kept a hand firmly over the sharpest of corners, sang praises and nursed me back to life.

I know you know it's okay.
We still love you bigger than the sky, Nana.