Author: Luisa A. Igloria

Even now, in my sixties, I keep falling
in love with things. The crumpled
texture and weave of linen, the sharp
clean edge of a cotton collar, the soft
slouchy hems of bright socks. A lingering 
lanolin smell in the folds of a wool 
sweater makes me think of the sheep 
that was in the news not too long ago. 
There was ample grassland where she
was stranded at the foot of the Scottish 
highlands. But with steep walls of rock 
on one side and open water on the other, 
she grew lonely for the company of others. 
It took two long years until four farmers 
used a winch to rappel down eight hundred 
feet to rescue her. If Fiona— for that 
was the name they gave her— could signal
her desire across the lonely shore 
of Cromarty Firth, I too understand 
the inner stirrings reminding me I'm 
still here, inhabiting a body that quickens 
to spring. Aren't you eager for the promise 
of light the clean color of washed quartz, 
for any small warm flame of delight you can 
still cup in your hands? The humming 
in the blood says yes, why not. Yes, yes.

I stock the freezer with food—
trays of chicken, a bag of peas 
and one of corn. Blocks of butter. 
Plastic boxes with meals I've made 
ahead of teaching nights or trips 
out of town. Adobo, picadillo, 
afritada: dishes that freeze well. 
I remember reading a poem in which 
the speaker described opening the last 
container of food her mother had made 
before she died; then she and her father
sat down at the kitchen table and ate
through their tears until they couldn't 
anymore. And so, while I can also see 
that part of the reel, I know life will 
continue wanting to be fed— wanting 
the onions peeled, the fruit cored, 
the kettle filled and put on the stove 
to boil. Wanting even the small, ordinary 
work of stirring sugar into coffee then 
tapping the teaspoon on the rim of the cup. 

If they would rather slit 
their husband's throats in bed 
than remain in forced, incestuous 
marriages, I imagine the forty-
nine daughters of Danaus must not 
have minded as much their punishment
in the afterlife: endlessly drawing 
water from the river to fill a vessel 
without a bottom. I'd prefer it 
to running a race then getting 
handed off as prize to a man 
I've never seen before. What about 
other characters cursed with impossible 
tasks? The girl commanded to separate 
and count each seed before sundown, 
the child who must sweep up all 
the sand in the desert. Then there's 
Sisyphus, who gets to push a boulder 
up a slope only for it to roll back down 
again. How many times did he say You've got
to be kidding or This is nuts? But he carried 
on, didn't he? What started out as grief or
punishment must have become commitment, 
patience. Maybe even pride. A way to shift
the burden of carrying from Impossible
to No matter what, I know what I can do.

I try deciphering the sky's patterns:
what blue means against grey, how much

white gathers over rust-colored hills 
at which time of day, before night

plunges everything into uniform 
darkness. Homebound during power 

outages as storms lashed at windows, 
to pass the hours sometimes we'd spin

cerveza bottles on the table when we 
played cards, told fortunes, or asked 

questions answerable by yes or no.  
Who its amber neck pointed to 

as it came to rest was the lucky or 
unlucky one. But the future is never 

a transparent sheet— more like a plain 
brown manila envelope with a seal 

that someone shoves under the door 
with a warning not to open it until 

it's time. But when is the right time, 
and what will you find should you open

the flap and bring its contents nearer 
the blue flame to read what it says?
   

Today it's Thursday. Wasn't it just 
Monday? Everything's moving too fast.

Every day seems to bring some new
betrayal of what we want to keep.

Buses and trains leave the station,
but at least they return. The neighbor's

dog barks when the postman brings the mail, 
yet I haven't heard from you. It's been

nearly five years. Still, I collect 
flickers of things— the shadow of leaves

on the trellis. Small, hard buds 
emerging from nodes on the fig tree, 

though the rest of it is still 
shrouded in winter sleep. Evening 

is a well into which the dark pours, 
so we can pull it up just one small pail 

at a time. But time, time is the windlass 
to which all things— and we— are lashed.

My ancestors knew how to listen
for sound before it even became
sound— for the tremor in the forest

canopy before seeds helicoptered
to the ground, for the rip in the air
through which a faraway storm first

tested its breath. It's a listening
that begins in the gut, that room
in the body where they knew

interrogations take place under 
a naked light bulb swinging 
from a scaffold of bone. 

They learned to trust the call
of shrikes in the field, slugs
shriveling into themselves 

at the first whiff of toxins in
the air. When I pause mid-breath
without even knowing why, it must be

their presence alerting me to the smell 
of smoke, from having lived through past 
fires. Obeying intuition, the body inks 

a more visible map through minefields, 
as if to signal that danger itself should 
step aside from knowing we've seen it. 

When they bought a record player console
with sliding cabinet doors, my parents
treated it like their most prized 
possession— something to throw
a flannel cover on when not in use, 
in case the chill mountain air might warp 
its wooden panels. The Impossible Dream
from The Man of La Mancha was my father's 
favorite recording. He had the Jack Jones
and Johnny Mathis, and later the Frank 
Sinatra version from the album That's Life. 
He liked to sit in an armchair after dinner, 
eyes closed as he listened to the singer's 
voice pull up and up toward the unreachable, 
as the music swelled like a wave on a dark
night pinpricked with stars inside
his chest. He told me Cervantes' story 
of a man who charged at windmills, believing 
they were giants; of how he vowed to fight
for the helpless and infirm. This 
was a noble quest, he stressed— to 
bear the unbearable sorrow and right
the unrightable wrong. I couldn't fathom
then what sorrows he could have been carrying, 
what wrongs he might have needed to address.
He's been gone more than thirty years, 
yet when the world feels tilted, I remember
how sure his voice sounded, as if 
the dream— any dream— was within reach.

My friend shows me his arthritic 
fingers, and I try to click my trigger 
thumb. But he can't hear the noise 
it makes because of the vacuum cleaner 
sounds made by the tinnitus in his ear. 
I suppose we're getting to the age 
when we can start to tell the difference 
between a dull hurt and a door that's 
permanently closed, between the new-new 
shine of chrome encasing a cheap plastic
interior and the unpolished gleam of a body
whose limp is louder than its mind. The world
loves words like résumé, strategic, and 
effective positioning. It rewards the one
who hasn't even earned their name,
the one who hasn't stood at the edge of
an ultimatum or answered a call at midnight
which rearranged the entire plot of a life.
I sometimes take my graduation ring 
out of its box and wear it, just to remind
myself I know some shit. I've learned
that forgive doesn't mean forget, but also
how shame burns hot at first but you can
learn to outlast it. Becoming is long, hard 
work, and I know I only have these ordinary 
days to build from, to cobble some light 
even from failure for the rest of the path.

My husband, who cooks on weekends,
goes on the internet to find out when 
weekends became a thing. In ancient Rome, 
every eighth day was market day. During 
the Han dynasty, officials took every fifth 
day off to rest and wash their hair. 
In the early nineteenth century, factory 
owners and laborers came to an agreement 
that work could stop at two on Saturday 
afternoon, as long as people would come 
to work sober on Monday. It wasn't until 
1940 that the Fair Labor Standards Act 
formalized the forty-hour workweek 
and the two-day weekend. Some people
wanted more time for beer, others
for prayers. Some people sit idling
at their desks, then promptly shut down
their computers at 5:01. It's as if
the ceiling had changed to a different
color. Some colleagues advise me to ignore 
work email on weekends, even when my Inbox 
column glows with insistent green dots 
at 10 PM. My youngest daughter says,
productivity and optimalization are concepts
of the capitalist machine. Why shouldn't rest
also be legislated? Heat up leftovers, or make
a small meal from scratch. Make tea, write 
in your notebook, make valentines with your 
second-grader. Think of a nap as an achievement, 
as well as the whole history behind your being where 
you are: here, when it could have been otherwise.

There are rooms from which I know I departed 
too quickly.

Displacement is its own unstable architecture.

I can never completely erase what was faint 
if it was persistent to begin with.

When I take my first clear breath after illness, 
the world smells both sharp and tender.

I remember echoes in stairwells, and streetcorners where
small flames were tended in the service of our hungers.

There are flowers that don't recognize boundaries.

We should learn from them that nothing wild is 
ever made to be captive.

Breath can rise even from the cracked earth.