Dismount from horses
Another sip of whiskey
A smile paints your eyes

Keep an eye out for mountain lions
is the latest,
down by the pond where the children catch snakes
and what about your husband quitting his job?
He hated it and what about what you hate?
Roommate smoking ******* cigarettes inside, half the night coughing
through paper thin walls
you can’t even ******* in peace.
Peace is a friend you have lost touch with because you are too busy.
Two jobs.
Feet still sore when you get up four times a night to ***.
The new place doesn’t allow pets.
Or smoking.
The rats still make you smile
there’s always the rats.
And feeling like a lava lamp when the baby moves.
Still alive for now.
Why cry?
No one can hear you but the baby probably can.
Listen to the wind in the aspens instead.
Beautifully sad sound.
Already their color is changing
you
have always been changing  
and still you are the little girl who used to leave messages for her cat on an answering machine.
That poor cat died a long time ago.
You’ve missed every cat who has died.
What if your baby dies?
Sometimes
your ******* leak.
THAT is a sign of life.
Life means you have to do another load of laundry.
Separating whites and colors is no longer necessary.
You haven’t heard from your husband today.
He says he’s having a lot of fun at his new restaurant.
Hope so
you’re not bitter
but how can you laugh with him in bed if he works nights?
***** it.
One glass of red wine.
Go on lots of walks.
Drink lots of water.
Soon your baby will be born.

It’s quiet in the mud season.
Off season travelors dine around the six-sided fireplace
discussing this week’s school shooting
and celebrating anniversaries, 40th birhdays.
Their burgers are sometimes overcooked and their wine is overpriced, but
they are happy.
They are far enough away
from the heartbreak of Monday
and imaginary deadlines
and close enough to the pasture
to feel the steam of the horses’ breath
in their outstretched hands.
One compliments my dress
and I touch my belly instinctively.
Her smile reminds me of my mother’s.

A thunder storm rolled through the valley
not too long ago.
I couldn’t remember the last time I heard thunder.
I stood outside in the rain
and closed my eyes
and felt myself getting smaller
with each flash of lightening
as if I were going back in time,
until Drew told me to come inside.

I laughed as he pulled me through the door
and kissed him deeply on the mouth
until he was laughing too, and wet,
and we made love before I had to go to the restaurant
and I felt our baby move for the first time.
As I walked to my car through the mist,
nostalgia found its way into my pores.
All that dampness in the air.

I am eleven, a child
of recent divorce.
(I do know what this means and I do not)
Outside the exotic bird store
I sit with my father and sisters,
savouring the dewy air of a summer night,
the melting sugar on my tongue.  
Instinctively
I turn my head towards the smell of tobacco
and find myself facing the group of teenagers
casually huddled outside a radioshack.  
Elegant blue smoke coils and twists above their heads
and becomes a cloud around them
like an idea that comes in focus
for the moment before it slips into the ether of subconscious.  
I am standing with them
then.  
Ice cream cone replaced by cigarette
careful braids replaced by loose ponytail.  
A freedom I have never felt before.  
And the terror of the realization
that I cannot be caught
not really
not anymore.  
I did not know exhilaration and sadness
could be felt together and it occurs to me
as it will in moments such as these,
that language cannot always be used to untangle a feeling.

My daughter was born at 4:34 am,
the same minute I was born
26 years,
one month,
and 26 days before.
I felt the warm, slippery crown of her skull
with my fingers
in the last moments we were one being,
and then she spilled out of me
the way something spills from a can
when the suction is broken.
She did not cry,
did not make one small sound,
but her arms flew to the air,
and I thought,
how wonderful it would be if we could all remember
that first instance of ecstatic release
having only known darkness,
a folded existence.
She was handed to me
like a tea set wrapped in a sweatshirt,
mindfully, delicately,
and her placement in my arms
came with the recognition
that my life now had a before
and an after.
There was no rush of love,
as they say,
just the momentous peace
in having met this stranger
who I had loved without knowing
from the moment she left her father
in frantic search
of her biological counterpart,
her soul joining itself.

I remember tiptoeing downstairs
at 8 years old
and watching Titanic with my parents
when I couldn’t sleep.
I remember
the acrid taste of the popcorn
that I left in the microwave too long,
the cocoon of my parents love
and our old green sofa.
And yet the details of my daughter’s birth,
the hours of exquisite pain
and visceral longing,
my memory has failed to keep.
My heart remembers
what my brain does not.
My body holds the blood memory of her.

There is a list of things I know I will forget.
The list is ever growing.
The list is endless.
The size and shape of her finger nails,
the pillowiness of the tops of  her feet.
How she looks up at me from a tangle of blankets
as I kiss my hand and bring it to her forehead,
repeating the phrase, I love you,
despite its inadequacy.
The way she appraises every stone in the gravel driveway
as if it were a planet of its own.
A trip we took to the beach
when she ran her fingers through sand for the first time.
So many first times.

If I weren’t her mother
I would choose to be the wrinkle in her elbow
or the gap between her teeth.
I would settle for a bird
that crosses the sky above her, igniting
if only for the briefest of moments,
something like pure wonder.

What I will remember is the endless love.