began with a glance, my daughter’s head tilted,
her eyes concerned. I think I hear the clockwork
of her heart and I’m like a newborn fawn,
damp, unsteady on spindly legs. The tables
have turned, now that I’m staving off
diminishment, my body telling me, be slow,
my emotions, blunted.

Words of love were stuck inside my mother,
her life, pinched. She could never ask
for anything. I breathed love into my son
and daughter every day. In my very first memory,
someone loves me, my uncle, carrying me,
four years old and ill, while I vomit over his
shoulder wearing the green checked dress
he’d brought me from India.

It’s a funny thing, memory, isn’t it?
It takes me longer to speak—language doesn’t
find me, nouns dangling on their strings.
The years of my forties, raising kids,
they’re blurred. I must have been there,
coddling eggs, packing peanut butter sandwiches,
making nachos, doing laundry, sitting in my office
listening to others’ troubles.

I used to be one for causes, demonstrations.
I don’t get exercised about things I can do
nothing to change. Age tells me changes will come
and stay awhile, then revert. The fire I worry about,
the fire in my heart, is going out slowly. Flames
no longer reach up, just smolder. I’m bent over,
lower to the ground. My children fan the fire.
I still feel the heat.