Untitled (2019)

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Let’s talk about words.

The ones we say to each other
and ourselves.  The self-talk of: You can’t be taken seriously as a person or an artist.  Look at your apartment, the dust on the walls, the onion skin on the kitchen floor, the pile of clothes on your grandmother’s chair.

Let’s talk about a well-lived in, temporary apartment that has books, papers, textbooks, everywhere you turn.  Your husband, in his last semester of Chinese medical school, the smell of herbs, the unfinished puzzle on the small kitchen table, the bills that are tacked to the wall, the pre-natal vitamins, the fertility medicine, the cabinet of supplements, the dried Chinese herbs, the vaginal steam box: because you were/are willing to try anything to feel better and get pregnant.

See the bedroom dresser with a drawing of your cats, letters, poems, and pictures from your students.  The sweet hamster in the living room that loves watermelon seeds, spinach, and pink lady apples.

Sit next to the window and listen.  Listen to the woodpecker, the birds that still chirp,
even in February.  Look at your bookcase, the rows of poetry books sent to you from friends.  Books about teaching creative writing.  Books that help you feel better.

Books that say, “You’re ok.”

You are ok.