Do You Remember: A song cycle

1. Genesis
If I knew you were coming back,
It would not look like this:

Handprints on cold windows,
Mirrors drained and drowsy.

The cherry blossom peaks no 
pink nor smells sweet like it should,

And the teacups on the porch 
Filled to the brim with yesterday’s rain are waiting. 

What childish fears ran through me.
And do you remember?

Our boat on the dock keeps rocking, 
begging, and the water wets its lips.

Now that you’re back we can finally find home.

2. First Prayer

Just near Easter, 
My dad walked me to the bus stop and 
I heard a frail peeping from my neighbor’s 
perfect lawn. 

A small, blue-grey lump was piled 
in the short-cut grass, wet with dew. 
A baby bluejay fell from an empty bundle 
of little twigs and crispy leaves up in a cherry tree.  

My dad gently cradled the jay in his palm and 
put him in a shoebox and I covered his 
naked body with a scrap of old cloth. 

I was left alone to hope, or my parents had
pre-determined the worst. 

I knelt on the cold black and white tiles of my 
mom’s bathroom, and though “faith” 
was not yet in my vocabulary, 
My mouth formed the words of a prayer for the first time. 

Then, I held the shoebox in my lap and waited 
for the baby jay to speak. 

3. Still; Sinking 

bed springs enfold you,
Barbed wires point through 
sheets; you let them.
And through the metal, you bid farewell  
to the sick, yellow wall behind your 
perfect, ivory-eyed daughter. 

I ask in my lamb voice,
Where are you going? 

4. Resurrection 

you set a ladder climbing the grey fence in the backyard like 
A dock to a deeper sea where 
The bottom is ash and surface is sky
And the living moves with lagging sway and murmur, 
You say that Mother gives guidance to open ears. 

I keep my breath to listen: rise
So I let my breath escape me, watch it drift up, up, 
and float slowly as boats.

5. Renewal

And now I stand in the presence of a structure that was my home:
The wreath that hangs is not my own, the cherry tree a ghost. 
The children that play have different faces, the inside erased. 

Who do they go to, 
what do they do, 
where do they go 
when placid rain comes too soon and
washes the inside out? 

I stand filling the rooms with details that belonged, 
plotting the grass with rich and rot,
watching memories grow over. 

In the window of my bedroom, I recognize the small girl with my eyes 
who turns on the lamp to recite psalms from a paisley notebook; those secrets I already know,
who comes out to hold my hand and watches the sky grow heavy. 

why did I come back to remember a place that is washed? 
four walls and a lid encompassing surreal sentiment and opened—
the spill, the gush—
I am empty

Without the rot that gave me wear without the rich that told me 
who what where why
my purpose? I will not find in this structure, my home. 

My purpose is whispered by the small girl; she warns me of the flood. 
When placid rain comes too soon
I will carry her above my shoulders.

6. Nativity 

The ripples on my mother’s belly remind me of streaks on my window pane—
did she cry when I left her home? 

7. Returning 

From outside in crowded brushes on a cold Christmas, 
I watch the love of my family light the space where I’m not.
They do not come to find me, heal me, but
their love, light enough to show me 
where to go.