Wearing a Path, and: hoy los aplausos se confunden con las gotas de la lluvia, and: Today I Feel Lifted and Better, and: How Quickly Can the Soul Leave the Body Before We Say Bless

Wearing a Path

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vitami ritrovai per una selva oscura,ché la diritta via era smarrita.

—Dante Alighieri

We found ourselves without our grandfather. We found ourselves facedwith stacks of naked women and reels of naked women. We found ourselves

walking the long way around the pale-carpeted dining roomwhich housed the never-to-be-used wedding china facing

that seamless wallpapered accent wall of the luxurious plantationnestled beyond the luminous pond. We were told not to walk through the room

because we were going to wear a path. What do I want to say? That my cousin tookmy hand and made me walk through when the doorbell rang with another offering

of food from the cousins down the street who are not really cousins. Do I wantto swear I could feel some moths fly up under my collarbones and beat about a bit

to get out? Or that someone was spinning cotton candy around my chest?

He brought wealth into our lives. He made sure we didn't want. He wanted usto keep things nice. He wanted nice things for himself, and didn't he deserve them?

Didn't he deserve everything?

Hoy los aplausos se confunden con las gotas de la lluvia

Swifts do not guard their time; they do not linger. When they comeback from Africa, we are happy. I was told to go back to Africa. The sea,that stupid slate wedge, sparks with such beauty. I feel lonely. A car goes past,

blasting I get so lonely lonely lonely lonely yeah, and my fingers tap. Today, theapplause gets confused with raindrops. The sun pulls soft tendrils of copperfrom the creamy stone. We shut ourselves upand trust the sea to stay put. I can't go back to anywhere. I have phantom

kicks in my belly. I am nursing, but it feels like I am ghosting. The seawaits, good slab of stone.

Clapter clapter siren anthem—we resist, growing quiet as the neighbors swoopto their windows. Their balconies cheer. We shove thyme down into our silent soil.

We have lived for too long in this beautiful city. The island rises in the distance and thecastle leans over the city beach. What a brat I've been, not taking all this in on the daily.I should visit blissmore often often often—I have lived too long in you.

Today I Feel Lifted and Better

in only a few places do the birds sing without a chorus of gunfire

—Patricia Spears Jones

Tell me you're that somebodywho gets pregnant after living one month in an orphanage.Tell me you're the one who has your baby a year laterand watches him nurse while you tighten and releaseyour deepest muscles, already trying to fit back into some ideaof what you should be. I really need somebody.                                                                                                   I watch Celiafor hours and hours, and for ages it is just baby and Celia and me.

Mami no, she says, Mami please,and I watch her mother lie for her and work for herand tell her to follow her dreams as I wish my baby to sleep.

I carry him up into a cave.I pray for the willingness to remember I am a child of Godand that nothing real can be threatened.In one drop of milk I see all the other mothersand how they love their babiesjust as much and just as little as I do mine.

How Quickly Can the Soul Leave the Body Before We Say Bless

Apples belong to the genus Malus. I stand with my hips pressing into the sink's marble,rinsing and twisting these sandy, gunmetal stems out of the fat fruit

with the alphabet...