February 18. 2025

portrait in hands

1. winter
I have not learned how to use a shovel.
Yet what is there to do but bend?
Afterward, I hold a palm against my lower back
as if steering a roiling ship.
Behind me, a semblance of a path
from there to here, my face
blushed with cold.

2. memory
I’m the only girl on the Saturday league team.
David never throws me the ball.
I have to steal it myself, and do.
A layup, just like in practice, ties
the game. The foul shot wins it.
In the local paper, a “7” next to my name
underneath David’s “12.” I am famous now,
forever, as far as I know.

3. Mill Valley
The car purrs under us, headlights on.
It’s spring, and we are loose
with secrets, flagrant. Nothing matters but
where we put our hands. We put them
everywhere.

4. Dad
Our last picture, he is asleep. In the center,
a wristband with his name, the hospital’s.
“Still here,” I say on the phone to anyone
I call. “Still here.”

5. potatoes
Two years later, we find potatoes in the garden where
we didn’t plant them. Make of this what you will—
neglect, inattention, ignorance. Time is its own miracle.
Dirt under our nails says so. The smell of oil in a hot pan.
Hunger, and its opposite.