This summer
it's rained more cats and dogs
than there is room in the kennels
when it finally stops for a day or two
the heat heavy
climbs on your back like
a wool sweater
makes you sweat just saying "hello"
to the neighbor
my eyelids feel like they got the worst sunburn of my life
It stings more than last year's heartbreak
Thank god,
this feeling won't last as long
I can forgive the summer
for her suffocating and intolerable
hot-headedness
She rewards me with sunny smiles
blue cloudless days
mostly
When her warm weather comes
I swim in all her bodies
the happiest fish in the sea
She gives me reason
to hang up that "Out to Lunch" sign
on the overachieving and overdoing
Truthfully,
I'd rather ride my bike in her company
spend the days with my toes in the sand
run through sprinklers with the kids
She makes me feel
alive
young again
so inside myself
I want to write her love letters
smother her in kisses
shower her with flowers
Forgiving the winter
feels like forgiving the worst part
of my own fumbling humanity
I was born in a January
my daddy died in a February
when I was born
winters were both beautiful and hard
the coal or wood for the stove
heavy
everyone worked hard to stay warm
they worked hard
to keep
the work going
We moved here in a November
by that December
we had the beginnings of the worst storm system on record
my dad waited for the bus
hours in his best shoes
not understanding
that here
one blizzard
could shut a whole city down
Snow
in our language never translated to
"stop moving"
nothing ever did
our first Christmas tree
the fake aluminum tinsel
illuminating all the ways
we only really
had each other
That year,
the hardest in all the ways
leaving and arriving
making you feel pulled apart and sewn back together
old, new
always
different
My dad
made some of our clothes and a lot of our furniture
not being totally legal
or all that legitimate
meant you had to work even harder
for less
bread on the table
and rest in your bed
My mom,
adept ninja
blocking harassing advancements
but losing her job
finally,
armed with her pride and small daughters
fumbling with this language
forced to untie her throat muscles
[now and still tight
like fiddle strings when she gets too excited]
in government offices asking for help
her seven-year-old
the world's most unlikely
conductor of melodies
made brave out of necessity
and a grumbling belly
It wasn't until I had my own daughter
It wasn't until I had my own daughter
playing in the snow
on endless winter days
I realized
I'd forgotten the pleasure of building
with my hands
When I was young,
I'd spend hours
my socks completely
wet
the insides of my mittens
soaking
they didn't make waterproof
for immigrant children
suitcases filled with only
their best clothes
a few pieces of expensive
Czech crystal
the seeds for sowing their future soil
Being wet in the cold
didn't matter to me much
then
what mattered
was the way my kid sister's eyes shone
hiding ourselves in dug-out tunnels
the front yard our playground
mostly oblivious
to the hours spent
alone
As an adult,
the long stretches of cold and being shut up inside
is the raw that rakes my nerves
The unhappy faces of people walking past
as they rush headlong against
a wind whipping them
senseless
By the end of winter,
I begin to lose all memory
of the scent of dew drops on grasses
the soft sound of wind blowing
through leaves
The stark beauty of winter's countenance
has by then
grown too harsh and uncaring
For half my life,
For half my life,
I thought my mom's birthday was in December
the confusion of war
her mother and grandmother
trauma fading memory
agreeing only that it had been cold and there had been snow
We celebrated her birthday
right after Christmas
Every year
I became more apprehensive and troubled
How could she and I
be cut from the same constellation
of stars, exactly?
Secretly,
I worried I'd become the same kind
stoic
afraid
struggling
leftover queen
After her grandmother died
After her grandmother died
we made a pilgrimage to her village
tending the soil of her grave
pulling up weeds
grown past the pickets
It was then
she found those lost documents
safeguarded in City Hall's records
the village unchanged
despite the wage of war
the marching of time
To me,
it seemed right that she was actually
born in a February
After that,
I began to really understand my mother
The end of February stirs with the first sign of
hoping for better days to come
spring and rebirth
closer at hand
My dad's birthday is
and now more
was
in a March
The two of them,
just like each other
quiet and loud
like the hush of winter
breaking its vows of silence
an endless stream of rain
softening the earth
making her ready to bloom
