Samantha Reynolds - 2
The big questionsYou used to ask me about death
in the dark in the whisper voice you use when you don’t want your stuffies to hear but now you are so cheerful about it pointing at old people in grocery stores asking me with some excitement if they are almost dead yesterday you cornered me and wanted to know if people ever die the night before Christmas I tell you people die every day in a tone that tries to say death is not scary but perhaps don’t bring it up so loud in public so you whisper back with wide eyes what does Santa do with their toys? Stories with no words
I am told we don’t remember much
before we are four though they are still there the memories like eggs you don’t see in a cake the acupuncturist tells me they hide in the body stories with no words roosting in our livers hanging from our lungs swept into webs around our hearts like the other day when I locked the bedroom door you screaming on the outside me on the inside I just need to not be here for a minute I begged silently with my eyes closed my fists white and dancing I tell myself there are exceptions memories that just fall out like loose change or then a map at least of your little body so I can find out where that moment has nested and love you enough to scrub it away. How I Know I Am an OptimistI know I am an optimist
because I am always pleased when the house is tidy surveying it like the conqueror of somebody else’s land and I believe it will stay that way that I am not Sisyphus that the boulder will not fall again and when your dad sings from downstairs there’s somethin’ dead or dyin’ in our fridge in his best Neil Young voice I know that I will simply hunt down the soft lump throw it away and we will never waste food again and when your sister takes all the clothes off the hangers while I am folding laundry and you yell it’s a emergency because you meant to print one copy of the Snow White picture but for some reason it printed 60 copies and we can’t get it to stop I just lay down on the floor and let the rhythm of the printer soothe me like a heartbeat I know it will be different tomorrow. This is where I find you
In the chalky light of morning
in the hallway whispering to three pieces of lint fluff one fluff two fluff three you point them out to me a solemn introduction they are on their way to Africa you tell me in a backhoe and then one piece of lint cleaves into two which is a tragedy I didn’t see coming half an hour later there we are your face all spent and splotchy teaching me a lesson I didn’t know I needed about how wide we can love. |
Samantha Reynolds' profile Go to page 1 of Samantha Reynolds' poetry Go to page 3 of Samantha Reynolds' poetry My four-year-old poetry teacherMy brain is jammed
with the noise of errands and the poem knows it half-done hiding away in the quiet of my ribcage waiting for a way back in which is how I came to see how the noticing pours out of you blunt and new like the colour of the girl’s hair in your drawing that is neither brown nor blonde and you tell me it is like a paper bag which of course it is and how you describe grandpa’s face as mushy and that a frog would feel like a bird if you held it tight in your hand and how nuns look like Red Riding Hood in black and white and how library books smell like closets so I kept asking and the answers dropped out of you obvious as stones each one a lesson in what it takes to be a poet. The feastThe poem sits inside you
like a hunter waiting for a weak moment of indecision or the lull of your commute and that’s when it pounces clawing its words into the hem of your lips for birth is no place for grace and your friends think it’s serene this poetry but they don’t see its teeth that if you don’t give it paper to feast on your friends will call for you and find only a stack of bones. You are more than a sweaty turnip
I take offence on your behalf
to what they focus on as you press your way week by week into my skin like this week one website compared you to a turnip and made note of your sweat glands and why the term rump like you are a cut of steak am I the only one who wonders if you dream yet and what about your amygdala a word so beautiful it could be your name that almond-shaped slice of your mind where your memories nest will I feel it when it grows collecting your slippery thoughts when you dream inside of me do I get to watch. I think of them often
I think of them often
hadn’t seen him much since high school never met his wife but we all heard the news the punch of grief wanting to bury the words far away I hold my daughter tight born at the same time and she feels suddenly like something that could blow away but later I forget and I wonder how dare I let someone so small make me feel so safe I think of them often and I realize I don’t know how to love a stranger and I don’t know how to ask do you count the days you had him or the hours. |
