Dtoe She lies on her back, singing, bare feet in the air, ready to run the ramp of a rainbow or balance a cloud. Why won't you sleep? I ask. Your big sister is in dreamland.
She rolls over, forages for lint under a table covered with dirty dishes and notes to myself.
This is my life.
Not the man writing at a cabin desk lined with books, photographs, the skull of a coyote, wildflowers and fossils.
Not the man watching meteors on the deck of a west-bound ship.
Not the monk whose mortgage is a hatful of snow.
I sit beside her. Dtoe, she says, puts her finger to her toe, her pink nail a shell containing oceans.
Dtoe, she pokes my toe, its nail yellow as old varnish. And it begins slowly. The moment fills me, forces me to attend to it.
Dtoe, I say, and it's rising bread, my body's fulcrum, the place where my soul pivots.
This is my life, I say. There's no one listening. I say it again. This is my life. |