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.
Collage art © Valentina Cozzi. All rights reserved. 
