February 27, 2008

• nighttime

  This week: I read a poem in the New Yorker. Read it again.
  Last week: Missed the lunar eclipse. Migraine.
  Last night: Stepped on a crayon drawing, rain-plastered to the sidewalk close to midnight. Under the orange glow of streetlamps, I studied its sun, mom and girl. The mom was bigger than everything.
  
  In 1986, my cousin Sheri and I huddled in a cotton blanket together on our grandma’s back deck. We were just girls and the night was deep and ancient. My dad plucked us from our beds to watch Halley’s Comet streak across the sky. The corn silo looked down on us, mute. The pool held a lima-bean swath of stars. The woods swayed, woozy.
  
  I remember my cousin’s dark tangled hair, close. I remember my Grandma’s nighttime face, waxen without makeup. I remember my dad’s enormous arm, extended to the sky and pointing.
  
  
  

  • 7:53 am
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