2003 Questions I’m Still Pondering
by Kate E. Wardenburg
If you’ve ever thought of thestrals, do you see their taut muscled bodies?
Have you ever opened a fresh box of Neapolitan ice cream and run a warm spatula through it? Sat on a
rickety lawn chair, basket-woven from nylon strips in 1970? Stuck your fingers between a scuffed whiffle
ball’s slats? Jammed a 35mm jack into your CD player and slung it over your shoulder like your mom’s
coolest crossbody?
If you ever twirled a silken oxygen tube between your fingers, who was it attached to?
Have you ever rolled around under mothball sheets adorned with tiny yellow flowers in blue vases? Drank icy
tap water from a translucent brown cup? Listened to static resonate from a box television in the seconds
before the Wheel of Fortune theme began? Brushed your index through the pillowy feathers atop a cockatiel’s
skull?
If your holiday plan ever made room for a new element of visitation, in what strange institution did you
congregate?
Have you ever run up the cracked concrete stoop, sneakers slapping aged linoleum towards the smell of warm
oatmeal raisin? Heard the thud and thunderous rush that comes before a rolling stream crashes into a mauve
ceramic tub? Dug your toes into shag while you flipped through a marbled-cardboard photo binder? Laid
your palms on thin, wrinkled hands to learn what motion forms a roll of yarn into a warming scarf?
If you have said goodbye, half knowing but not really believing you’d never say hello again, where were you
heading when you stepped across the threshold?