One day, my father built a deck in the backyard.
To build this deck
My dad pulled together a handful of handymen
friends from Quaker meeting and work, old neighbors.
As we navigated the torn-up back of the house
their bearded faces and heavy belts smiled at me
grunting How Are You?s
when I still hadn’t yet learned the art of breathing back
Good Thanks How Are You
Because my language still came in nervous smiles
and absentmindedly brushing ill-fated bangs out of my eyes
I avoided the busy sounds
that even I could tell filled the whole neighborhood
of screws gnawing through wood
like bees eating grass
and played near the sandbox.
And This, I knew even then,
watching the grown-ups slide wooden poles into the ground
for something supposed to be bigger, fuller
was thinking what Memory felt like
because I knew this was all it ever was and had been up until then
All I had right then was that day, those hours,
of hearing the wood and avoiding the grown-ups
I could feel the salty numbness of knowing This,
like everything, would end
become hole, finished
Until I can hardly remember our yard without it.
Half of growing up is remembering how you forgot
when certain things disappear
and realizing you couldn’t hardly notice them gone.
My backyard was where we crafted our elaborate snowforts
on those bleak winter days after sledding on Slauson Hill
coats soggy and slushy
feet tired from carrying us and our too-big boots through the crisp snowfall.
This was where the grass yellowed until it shriveled into the soil to become green again
where we scrounged the ground to pick up the leftovers of used waterballoons
chased each other with water guns and wild giggles
where venturesome legos became encrusted with dirt
and knees spoke grass stains
and release into a slimy pile of leaves
where the projectile of a water sprinkler hit my eyelids as I danced in the muddy grass in a one-piece bathing suit
a green play set rusted into the ground
its springs creaking under our growth spurts
until it disappeared
This was where we filmed the fight scenes for our movies
the unfinished Star Wars epic we were supposed to send to George Lucas
which somehow never got edited
For pick-up games of baseball with the neighborhood boys
The corner of the garage made first base,
the clumpy tree in the back second
and the electrical pole third.
In the warmer months I played catch with my dad.
Every once in a while our baseball would hit the electrical wires dangling overhead
stalling in midair until it came back down in between us.
And I’d always be asking questions
because my dad knew everything
and I was curious.
like, How old is the universe?
And
How big is an atom?
And
But how do we even know?
And
how that baseball between us would keep its parabolic path
if not for gravity, friction, air resistance or the ground beneath us.
And These questions will always follow a path of calculated indetermincy
but our ball-throwing days will not.
We buried my mom’s cat one day in the makeshift garden out back.
He was wrapped in a coat to keep him warm during the winter
I helped make his gravestone,
now a cracked slab of granite with cheap plastic jewels
hidden by overgrown weeds.
These days my dad weeds the yard
and asks us to mow it.
The grass seed with ground-up newspaper is laid down
over rough clumps where our memories of childhood have wilted.
I come here when I finish my runs
and think about how long it’s been
since my shoes have occupied these specific square feet of the universe.
