April 1991

Maybe if there had been (more) color in my life,
I wouldn’t hate love so much.
All I remember is green.
The green of the visitor deck where the duck family lived.
I liked those ducks—
Liked watching them grow from infant to toddler
(Like) a premonition of the prayer in my mother’s womb.
None of it made sense—
It still doesn’t.
Maybe there’s some red in there too;
Red in the thin little tubes covering her face and body.
Red on his hands.
Oh yes, and black…
Maybe dark brown?
I remember her hair—
Her dark brown hair.
Seventeen years later it still touches the top of her shoulders.
I am at the same instant repulsed and drawn to her.
She’s both my heart’s magnet and finger nails on a school chalk board.
She’s like the sun and the rain—whenever I have one, I want the other instead.
She’s like chocolate and poached eggs.

And so I ask myself,

Why do five year olds not play dead?
And how can this answered prayer support a head?
I ended up wanting to be the one being fed…

I wish someone had told me I was necessary.

~A-M, 11/30/08