you weren't born yet.
I stood looking up at the wall of holly that rose
thousands of feet high, as far as I could tell;
whatever top it might have was lost in the bright atmosphere.
leaves like dark mirrors showed and flashed
the glowing sky. "what is on the other side?" I asked. no-one
answered. it was too thick to see through.
you were about to be born, I think. I don't
remember. the rosehips we were crushing energetically
with flat stones because someone had dropped the mortar
and it was cracked in five pieces on the ground. no-one
picked them up. we all just walked around them.
we had rose-hip jam. your parents
fussed over it like children who needed to be put to bed.
this was just after you were born. I remember
you were there. I remember I was looking down at you
in your bed lumped by blankets.
the previous day an old man had stopped me on the road to say,
"those are sumac. not the poison kind but you'll itch something awful."
so I was thinking about vines smothering unknown shapes
into the kind of indistinct lumps that crouched on you.
it was the week after you were unborn, age five,
that the dark mirror in my room cracked and showed
your face. you seemed impatient
that I had never learned how to read lips
so you stepped through, crushing energetically
the shards beneath your bare stone foot.
"can you hear me NOW?" you asked, in your five-year-old imperiousness.
"loud and clear," I said. "can I tell you something?"
"if it's about the cyclical nature of time I don't care," you told me.
"you weren't born yet," I began.