But I've never been very good at being seeker. I am wildly turning around, always searching for yesterday's me, like Orpheus looking for

Eurydice. The person I seek dissolves the very moment I glimpse her. I am still leaning back, reaching behind for

her,

My little Eurydice.

At my 5th birthday party, I ran away and sobbed because I couldn't bear the pain of no longer being four.

I've always lived this life of looking backwards. The pattern is very old and inescapable: scrimshawed into my child bones.

not bothering to watch where it drops 

It’s long stay has been announced 

As clouds cover the sky no feelings or thoughts 

The clouds creep into my mind

Tears welling in my eyes my heart hallow 

The words in my head leave me agonized  

Some of the statements too hard to swallow 

I watch as the colors in the sky manipulate 

The scenery changes but the dark gray remains 

Will this rain even take a break 

I don’t think I’ll ever see the sun’s flames 

Because today is a cloudy day 

This day full of hate regret and remorse 

The sun won't shine in this haunted display 

And the sky is swallowed whole 

every painful cry ignored 

but return: stumps grow back hands,

a head reconnects to a neck,

a whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic.

Later this vision is not True:

the grandmother remains dead

not hibernating in a wolf's belly.

Or the blue parakeet does not return

from the little grave in the fern garden

though one may wake in the morning

thinking mother's call is the bird.

Or maybe the bird is with grandmother

inside light. Or grandmother was the bird

and is now the dog

gnawing on the chair leg.

Where do the gone things go

when the child is old enough

to walk herself to school,

her playmates already

pumping so high the swing hiccups

Line after line, we never cried.

Dot after dot, we subside.

Comma after comma,

We became untied.

Punctuation.

Annotate.

Printing.

Write.

Fell from a tree, and broke his knee. 

Somehow sipping his tea.

All because he needed to kill a flea.