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She holds a small, flower print suitcase

and stands on a small strip of green

next to the rowhouses where she lives

with parents and a sister. She looks out

past visitor parking- past the empty schoolyard,

and out past the next subdivision before she sits

under a scraggly tree, in scratchy Bermuda grass.

 

Somehow, she knows- to leave now would be a mistake.

 

Carefully, she calculates she’ll be free

to leave in nine years. She knows this is something

she can do because she’s already lived nine years.

She eats a peanut butter sandwich and goes home.

 

Later that summer, she will baptize all the neighborhood cats.

In two years, she will go to summer camp, and astronauts

will land on the moon. In 1976, she will leave home

to attend a small college in the redwoods. She will study psychology.

In the 80’s, she will give birth to three babies of her own.

She will become a midwife and believe in the redemptive power

of women-centered birth, until she can’t.

She will retire to the desert where a river flows

not far from her home. She will become a citizen scientist.

She will learn to measure the turbidity of the water.

 

She used to dream she was lying face down in the gravel,

unable to scream because she had a mouth full of dirt.

Now she’s like that woman in the story who lost her left leg

and has a crow living inside her- except she has two legs

and the bird living inside her is a song sparrow.