CONFIDENCE
I am water. I am earth. My parents were fire and air. I was pulled from the womb unwilling to face the birth canal when another option was possible. It is always possible. I come to you now on the verge of discovery. My sails are flowing and I am confident of this wind and this salt air, the canvas blowing filling with colors. This confidence is like a gift and I appreciate and I endure; weaving the strands into patterns into make believe and real and something warm to wear. Life came to me in summer and footy pajamas. The fourth generation, baby Polish princess at the top of the aluminum siding castle. There was a picnic table in the back yard. And my mother was air could she make them like her more by liking me enough. And my father was fire over books and bad kitchen lighting to hook a career out of this place where he too was born. We fled to the desert when I was three leaving snows behind and the oven my grandmother used to burn her children’s hands with when they were bad. A new set of grandparents welcomed me like a second birth and there was a kitten for a friend, soon a pool, and a million books of witches and goblins and girls who knew magic. My mother stayed inside with romance novels and melon ballers and sometimes gin and vermouth but always perfect; coming outside with cut up vegetables and hours working to please the palette of my Dad. She knew her role. She was air. She passed through. And when I was good I was very very good and when I was bad I was horid. Sweat pulled off in the dry heat like mirage as I waited for my father to get home to punish me for something done again to my mother. He was fire. She was air and I was earth and water. The tension and terror of the beating and having to do whatever she said or else. This much I remember and nothing more will come to this page today. I am lifted from the story in a giant helium balloon and carried up up up to the stars and evening night as the sunset hits camelback mountain and saguaros turn purple with goodnight.
