Onion Songs

SOMETIMES I GET LOST

The woman in the photograph has no name. I have no story for what she is to me. I want to say she starts her day with “A,” first in the alphabet, and that she is first in my heart. “You’re just the best,” I say to her shimmering image, as if encouragement will grow eyes that see out of that paper portrait and soft lips that speak, identifying herself, available for more.

She may be alive or she may be dead. There is no difference inside my happy skull.

The day (morning? afternoon?) is cold. I reach out to wrap my children around me. I try to be careful, but some always fall away. I can hear them tumble, even with my eyes closed and hands clamped over my ears.

It is so sad to see an unfamiliar face in the mirror. I have fallen into someone else’s life, and now I must teach him how to cry.

In the distance there is the sound of buses pulling away for home. I can hear nothing with this fellow’s ears, except the stumble-bum rhythm of my own heart. It is so sad to see the backs of people’s heads. They are like portraits without features.

Inside my skull, people rearrange themselves. They may not realize how terrifying this game is.

This woman holding my hand: a very long time ago I stayed up all night building her a house full of dolls. I decorated each room to be like a room she might one day live in. Perhaps now I can crawl into one of those tiny rooms and stay. I will make myself very small: they will feel me against their faces or around their ankles and believe I am a soft breeze.

For years everything will be the same. I will have memorized the positions of all the furniture. No one will have thought to rearrange things. I will have a name for every voice I hear. Their names will be like music. Said together, the sound will make the walls shake.

Finally the girl’s hand arrives. I remember it being as delicate and tentative as a new bird learning flight. It is all that and more. The hand wraps itself around and takes me high in the air with its tender embrace. Careful not to break me, but this reunion is breaking me up inside, as wife, children, and grandchildren come tumbling out of my mouth.

The child watches me for a very long time, as if examining me for surprises. I cannot change the smile painted broadly across my face. Carefully she places me back inside rooms within rooms.

Sometimes I get lost, and it takes years for the memories to find me. Someday I will wake up big. I will wake up huge.

Until then, sweetheart, tell me your name. And if I still look confused, tell it to me again.