She's turning thirty-three

Black dress, black tube, blue jeans with black elastic ribbing

A curly top Baby who has been so busy at law school came by and spent the weekend. We had so much fun. Nothing much can truly describe happiness. She called a few hours ago because the friend that we were talking about the last few days had died of a heart failure. She was twenty-two.

Curly Top called and wailed. She wailed so loud over my celphone. Eternal sobs. Having experienced so much death myself, I just told her to breathe. I took a long hot bath and paced in my room in a yellow towel. What do you really wear to see the dead?

I wanted to feel casual about it so I put on my jeans. I wanted to show my grief so I wore a black sleeveless shirt dress. I wanted to layer the outfit so I wore a black tube with buttons running down in front like a strapless vest. (It sounds like a terrible combination. Well this is a terrible and confusing time.)

Then I waitied for Curly Top to come by and fetch me. Waited for some news of where, when and how and why. My newly shampooed hair was cold on my back. I couldn't identify sickness from sadness.

Sunday, uncle's old company shirt, barefoot

Waiting for a student assistant and typing along, the mayas have left the rooftop to eat. Sunday, sunday, sunday. I think of all my Babies and their interactions with the world and know that my role is to watch, watch, watch the world spin, spin, spin, around them. I have never been thirty-two. After the age of eleven, I think I turned thirteen four years ago and stopped counting. I am about to be thirty-three and I have a little more than a month to know what thirty-three is about.

Thirty three pieces of silver in the hands of Judas?
The age when Jesus was crucified?

This old company shirt, kitchy logo of Taka Shoes, was from my Uncle who is already dead. Maybe as the role of the Guevaras in the shoe industry is already dead. Of course, I will look back.

Barefoot with tired feet. Last night, a reading with old friends and people I will always love even when everything is done. (What is this wind blowing through my door? The summer heat is starting to make me homesick. It was Mickey's Birthday last Thursday. I will have to buy him something magical, my giant brother.)

Other Things. Poets and their many levels of energy.
1. It is best to just be silent and watch the bigger aura glow, a new resolution.

2. Avoid people who don't seem to want to be your friend after five polite times.

3. We are all, always, absolutely right. Nod frequently and return every minute to your sacred space.

Thought 1

A Few Lines from Rehoboth Beach
by Fleda Brown


Dear friend, you were right: the smell of fish and foam

and algae makes one green smell together. It clears

my head. It empties me enough to fit down in my own



skin for a while, singleminded as a surfer. The first

day here, there was nobody, from one distance

to the other. Rain rose from the waves like steam,



dark lifted off the dark. All I could think of

were hymns, all I knew the words to: the oldest

motions tuning up in me. There was a horseshoe crab



shell, a translucent egg sack, a log of a tired jetty,

and another, and another. I walked miles, holding

my suffering deeply and courteously, as if I were holding



a package for somebody else who would come back

like sunlight. In the morning, the boardwalk opened

wide and white with sun, gulls on one leg in the slicks.



Cold waves, cold air, and people out in heavy coats,

arm in arm along the sheen of waves. A single boy

in shorts rode his skimboard out thigh-high, making



intricate moves across the March ice-water. I thought

he must be painfully cold, but, I hear you say, he had

all the world emptied, to practice his smooth stand.




From Do Not Peel the Birches by Fleda Brown. Copyright © 1993 by Fleda Brown. Reprinted with permission of the author and Purdue University Press. All rights reserved.