Rescue

You leaned against the wall, feet
off the ground, propped on chairs
pushed up to the table, giggling,
chattering, continuing the giddiness
that had blessed today's breakfast, while
I buttered my toast across the kitchen,
attempting to keep up conversation, to keep up
with your good cheer. Then, 
somewhere between "Hey Google" 
and the reliable response, the switch flipped. 
A breathless, playful call for help, transformed
into a panicked, full-throated cry. 
Your balance had shifted. Everything became
precarious, unpredictable, threatening.
Google blithely rattled off the answer

to my now utterly irrelevant question, 
and I could only stand staring like a sailor
watching a sudden summer squall swamping the decks.
Those waves swept us both, powerless, overboard.
Feet safely back on the floor, you glared,
tearfully condemning me for  my betrayal:
How could I just stand there and watch,
consign you to the sea, to the depths,
and not save you? 
Survival was small consolation. 
Mutely accepting your wordless accusation,
I hoped only that I would be given another chance
the next time you need a rescue.

shut the door

I can shut the door.
Outside of that,
there's little I control,
but I can shut the door.

I can close this space
and trap myself inside.
A gentle push is all it takes.
I can shut the door.

Empty cubicles,
oppressive, bleak, and still
feel less ominous when
I can shut the door.

Feel like giving up.
Quitting. Had enough.
Closing up brings calm.
I can shut the door.

snow on the tulips

It always snows at least once on the tulips
my aunt used to say...

... at least I am told she used to say that.
I'm not sure it was something she said
more than once, and that once was to my mother,
a kind of  "welcome to Utah" moment to help mom
deal with the realities of making a home in a new,
unfamiliar state and climate. The way she remembers
that maxim year to year shows just how much
she must have appreciated having family around
to help her adjust.

What I remember Aunt Denise saying was
"Seeds! Bring me back some seeds!" her eyes
alight in the dim kitchen of her Sandy home,
just weeks before I left for Italy. She wanted
real Italian tomatoes and herbs growing
in her own windowsills, an authentic Mediterranean
garden in the middle of Utah.

It sounds like a simple request, but one
I was wholly unprepared to help with
as a clueless 19-year-old, who probably couldn't
have found out how to get seeds in my hometown,
let alone a foreign country. Her quest weighed on me,
worried me for almost two years; what would she say
when I came home empty-handed?

In the final month of my mission, on a rainy,
quiet day in Livorno, in a dark library near
the cathedral, where I checked my email each week,
I learned she was no longer waiting for them,
no longer waiting for anything, and that she would
never speak to me about the seeds—about tomatoes,
basil, oregano, or even tulips—again.