“More than gems in my comb box shaped by the
God of the Sea, I prize you, my daughter . . .”
—Lady Otomo, eighth century, Japan

A woman weaves 
her daughter’s wedding 
slippers that will carry 
her steps into a new life. 
The mother weeps alone
into her jeweled sewing box	
slips red thread
around its spool, 
the same she used to stitch 
her daughter’s first silk jacket 
embroidered with turtles 
that would bring luck, long life. 
She remembers all the steps 
taken by her daughter’s 
unbound quick feet:
dancing on the stones 
of the yard among yellow
butterflies and white breasted sparrows. 
And she grew, legs strong 
body long, mind
independent.
Now she captures all eyes 
with her hair combed smooth 
and her hips gently 
swaying like bamboo. 
The woman
spins her thread 
from the spool of her heart, 
knotted to her daughter‘s 
departing
wedding slippers.

                                              One river gives
                                              Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.
 

My language has its own world 
where he doesn’t know how to live,
but he should learn my language;
then he can call my mother to say
that I am dead. I drive too fast 
and someone else drives too fast 
and we crash on the icy road.
The death sweeps me away.
He can tell this to my mother 
if he learns my language. 
Her large yellow voice travels 
and hits his body, but at least she knows 
that I am dead, and if I die,
I want him to tell my mother 
with his deep voice shaking.

My favorite children’s bedtime prayer
is the one that goes:

                 Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
                 The bed be blest that I lie upon,
                 Four angels to my bed,
                 Four angels around my head,
                 One to watch and one to pray,
                 And two to bear my soul away.

This is such a vast improvement
over the more popular,

                 Now I lay me down to sleep,
                 I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
                 If I should die before I wake,
                 I pray the Lord my soul to take.

The difference is that
in one, you get to go
to bed with four men.

But in both, the child is afraid
he will die in the middle
of the night in his sleep.

                                               (Why? What’s going on in these homes?
                     Where’s Child Protective Services when they’re needed?)

Later, the child will grow up
and realize the lie hidden 
in those prefabricated prayers.

That is what most people want:
to die in your sleep,
to die in your own bed.

You are standing in the minefield again.
Someone who is dead now

told you it is where you will learn
to dance. Snow on your lips like a salted

cut, you leap between your deaths, black as god’s
periods. Your arms cleaving little wounds

in the wind. You are something made. Then made
to survive, which means you are somebody’s

son. Which means if you open your eyes, you’ll be back
in that house, beneath a blanket printed with yellow sailboats.

Your mother’s boyfriend, his bald head ringed with red
hair, like a planet on fire, kneeling

by your bed again. Air of whiskey & crushed
Oreos. Snow falling through the window: ash returned

from a failed fable. His spilled-ink hand
on your chest. & you keep dancing inside the minefield—

motionless. The curtains fluttering. Honeyed light
beneath the door. His breath. His wet blue face: earth

spinning in no one’s orbit. & you want someone to say Hey…Hey
I think your dancing is gorgeous. A little waltz to die for,

darling. You want someone to say all this
is long ago. That one night, very soon, you’ll pack a bag

with your favorite paperback & your mother’s .45,
that the surest shelter was always the thoughts

above your head. That it’s fair—it has to be—
how our hands hurt us, then give us

the world. How you can love the world
until there’s nothing left to love

but yourself. Then you can stop.
Then you can walk away—back into the fog

-walled minefield, where the vein in your neck adores you
to zero. You can walk away. You can be nothing

& still breathing. Believe me.