Advice

 

Two months old, you were

all restless limbs and searching hands,

grasping hair or cheek or earrings—and once

the hot ember of your mother’s cigarette.

 

When I saw the crusted blister

I imagined the lit end dangling in front of your questing hands,

her head nodding as she floated,

holding you.

She shrugged my questions away.  No big deal.

Your fault really because you’d grabbed it,

attracted to the light, she guessed, before she could do anything

about it and then you wouldn’t let go

even though you were screaming.

 

I wanted to take you then.  Adopt, steal, run away,

whatever it took to keep you at least a chubby arm’s distance

from danger.  Family complexities intervened.  You remained niece

instead of daughter.  And then she floated you across an ocean,

her marriage to your father lost to bent spoons and ashes.

 

13 years later, you met strangers in a restaurant.  So eager

for family, titles of aunt and uncle rolled off your tongue like rainwater

down temple eaves.  The impulse to steal you away still burned, impossible.

Impractical.  I watched as you built unsteady

bridges to your alcoholic father. 

 

You’re 18 now.  We talk in recovery jargon, adult phrases about why he can’t

remember your birthday, won’t

jingle your phone on Christmas, despite promised fresh starts. 

Your hurt is thick over the phone,

smeared like a poultice over old wounds.  And while I no longer

dream of spiriting you away,

I do tell you to let go of the ember

so you can stop screaming.