I want my old life back, a woman 
at the doctor’s office said to me. 
Her husband died six months ago. 
She told me her story—the sudden 

ambulance, surgery, a throbbing scar 
on her husband’s chest. Death. 
And what follows. A confusion 
of paperwork and friends turning 

elsewhere. I want the life when peas 
straight from the garden pinged 
into a bowl Mom held while she sat 
on the back steps. She pronounced 

every vowel in pimiento, a trip 
to Mexico in 1933 still on her tongue. 
Menstruation, she said, all four syllables. 
Not the curse. I’d like to go back 

to revise and expand my life. 
No more spilled sugar, no flooded 
basement. I poke into the past 
with a pencil, and oranges tumble onto 

last year’s grass. Now I hear flute notes 
of thrushes, see snowdrop blooms 
bending back toward the dirt. I make 
a gesture toward justice, write a check, 

sign a petition. Online, at a distance. 
Where is the old life? It’s burning 
in the back yard, the husband’s work pants, 
his old boots. I want my mother back. 

Must I choose? Which fictions. Which bruised 
truth. I want old river channels, wave-cut 
terraces, strand lines, all the light reflected 
on the sea and all the darkness beneath it.

Barbara Daniels’ most recent book, Talk to the Lioness, was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poetry has appeared in Main Street Rag, Free State Review, Ghost City, Philadelphia Stories, and many other journals. She has received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Appears In

Cagibi Issue 26