Love Letters to the Dead(75)

“There are a lot of human experiences that challenge the limits of our language,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons that we have poetry.” She smiled. “Here.” She fished something out of her desk. “I wanted to give you this. I’d copied it for you at the beginning of the year, since you seemed to like Bishop so much. But then—well, maybe you weren’t ready for it yet.”

I took the poem. “Thank you,” I said.

Then she said, “I’m proud of you. It’s not easy, and you’ve done a great job this year.” She didn’t have to be that nice to me, but she was.

I thanked her again for the poem. I was anxious to read it, so I found a bench and sat outside before I went to lunch. It was your poem called “The Armadillo.” I loved the poem so much, it stopped my heart. And I knew why Mrs. Buster had given it to me. It was about a certain kind of beauty we aspire to and how fragile it is. The poem starts out talking about fire balloons that people send off into the sky. The paper chambers flush and fill with light / that comes and goes, like hearts as they rise toward the stars. When the air is still, they steer between the kite sticks of the Southern Cross, but with a wind, they become dangerous. The end of the poem shows the tragedy that happens.

Last night another big one fell.

It splattered like an egg of fire

against the cliff behind the house.

The flame ran down. We saw the pair



of owls who nest there flying up

and up, their whirling black-and-white

stained bright pink underneath, until

they shrieked up out of sight.



The ancient owls’ nest must have burned.

Hastily, all alone,

a glistening armadillo left the scene,

rose-flecked, head down, tail down,



and then a baby rabbit jumped out,

short-eared, to our surprise.

So soft!—a handful of intangible ash

with fixed, ignited eyes.



Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!

O falling fire and piercing cry

and panic, and a weak mailed fist

clenched ignorant against the sky!

I couldn’t stop thinking of it, our flushing hearts, trying to climb to the stars—how with the wrong wind, we can fall. I’m not sure if this is what you meant by the poem, but it made me think of how we all have both parts in us. I think maybe we all carry both the fire balloons and the soft animal creatures who could be hurt by them inside of us. It’s easy to feel like the bunny rabbit frozen in terror. And it’s easy to feel like one of the fire balloons, at the whim of the wind, either rising up out of sight or burning down. Blown one direction or another.

But there is a third thing in the poem—your voice. The one who saw it. The one who could stand and witness, the one who turned the pain and terror into this beautiful lyric. So maybe when we can say things, when we can write the words, when we can express how it feels, we aren’t so helpless.

I thought after reading your poem today that I might want to try to be a writer, too. Even though I don’t think I can ever write a poem as good as yours, it made me think that maybe I can do something with all of the feelings in me, even the ones that are sad and scared and angry. Maybe when we can tell the stories, however bad they are, we don’t belong to them anymore. They become ours. And maybe what growing up really means is knowing that you don’t have to just be a character, going whichever way the story says. It’s knowing that you could be the author instead.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Judy,

Mom got here four days ago. Of course she had to come back on the last weekend before school is over. Part of me wished I was out with my friends, but instead I was at the airport with Aunt Amy, waiting on the bench and watching the bags turning on their carousel, nervously balling up the fabric of my dress.

Then I saw Mom, riding down the elevator as if she’d walked out of another life. She was shifting her travel purse from shoulder to shoulder, the same one that she used to pack up with snacks to sneak into the movie theater when we were little. Her soft brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. When her eyes met mine, she waved and put on a big happy smile. Then there was this awkward moment where we weren’t actually close enough to say anything yet. I didn’t know if I was supposed to run up and hug her, but I stayed frozen in my seat.

When she was standing in front of me, I got up and let her pull me against her body. She smelled the same, like our brand of dryer sheets and the lavender perfume she always dabs behind her ears, and something else—a smell like falling to sleep.

“Laurel,” she said. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you, too, Mom.”

Then she and Aunt Amy hugged, and we stood around, waiting for Mom’s suitcase and making awkward small talk—how is school, how was the flight, how about the weather. Never mind how was the whole past year when I didn’t see you. It felt like a canyon between us, the time that had passed.

And it stayed like that, the first couple of days. Like we were still in the in-between space of the airport. Like we weren’t home anymore, but we hadn’t arrived anywhere else. I mostly stayed in my room studying for finals, and Mom kept busy, as if she was trying to make up for the year of mom stuff that she’d missed. She made me waffles for breakfast, packed lunches with sandwiches on perfectly toasted bread, and made her famous enchiladas for Aunt Amy and me for dinner. Aunt Amy did a lot of the talking, actually. She’d tell Mom stuff about how well I’d done in my science class, or how Mom raised a good daughter because I always helped with the dishes. Mom would ask me the most basic questions. “What was your favorite class this year?” I felt like we were tiptoeing over a sheet of ice that could break any minute. We’d gone a whole three days without actually saying May’s name.