For My Birthday

32 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW ELLEN LEVINE FOR MY BIRTHDAY Imprinted on those particular genes was the way my face came together, Levine mouth, and the nose of some ancestor passed from my grandfather to my mother. I remember how at parties and weddings relatives lined up, and there'd be no mistaking branches of the family tree, Goldmans little and stout, Wassers, who forsaking Russia produced my American mother, the red haired child who carried on their freckles and slipped them to me at the moment I was conceived. One daring sperm tickled an egg, and there I began, dark hair and eyes, my height ordained at five foot six, and the Goldman strain in my Grandmother's square-tipped fingers. I heard the clock tick as my parents embraced that night, and what they set in motion, lungs sucking for air, heart beating under the stark ribs, keeps time, keeps time. I knocked my mother's legs apart and slid out of the dark. All my fathers live in my eyes, and nothing saves us against love. ...