These are the days we tell ourselves to stay in the house.
We wish for brighter days, sunlit days, days our grandmothers
would recognize. When I was a child, I spoke as a child,
but now….we long for childhood, hours spent beside the warm stove
that always produced sweetness. Should we consult the oracle or almanac,
find out the science behind these dark days? Everything ends in tears.
We do not watch the news for fear we will break down, tears
streaming down our faces, not fit to write or cook or leave the house.
Instead we consult poems as if they were oracles, we read the almanac
the way we used to read the internet. We find ourselves deciphering grandmother’s
recipes as if they are cryptograms with news on how to use the stove
to create happiness. If only it were so. We long for our time as a child,
running, running, with grass-stained knees and a red, red mouth. No child
should have to know what we know now. No, children’s tears
might result from accidents with the swing, a bee sting, a hot stove,
not an encounter with a monster who is all too real, or photos of the White House
and the horror therein. We long for another time, for the President of grandmother,
an old man with white hair, too senile to be dangerous. According to the almanac,
the End Times are not yet upon us. Let us give thanks. But no almanac
contains prophecies of the future. For that, we must consult a child,
the Dalai Lama, or an ancient rune. Remember what your grandmother
told you: If you can’t say something nice…shh! The salt in your tears
might foretell dementia or the coming of a great vision. In your house,
you have the ingredients for a chocolate cake. Look at your stove,
it could be a portal to another universe, a method of time travel, the stove
can move you through the miracle of fire. This information is in no almanac,
nor any Holy Book nor is it found in your mind. In order to live, leave the house,
find the way laid out in the sidewalk, in hopscotch trails drawn with chalk by a child.
There is no other way. As you travel, you will encounter memories, your first tears
shed into the blonde hair of a doll, or left on your mother’s shoulder. Your grandmother
is no longer of this world. You must accept that. Now you become the grandmother,
the mother, the sorcerer, teller of tales, the witch. Stir your caldron at the stove,
mix wine, the juice of lemon and orange, the blood of strawberries, your own tears,
with the strains of some old Psalm. You must survive. Consult the almanac,
plant daisies and kale and thyme. View the garden of the world as if you were a child,
craft a bed with your own hands, sew your own linens. Your body is a house.
Stitch together your tears to make an emotional almanac.
Be a grandmother, ruminating before the cold stove.
We each become a child again inside this dying house.
