Hieroglyphs

for Meghan

I bob and weave in the winter-laden street

retracing the hill I climbed each night

to bring on labor.

When I step back and squint

I see the rooms that sheltered us

exposed to raw December.

Pale and clammy, our house has shrunk.

The siding’s gone shabby,

dark blue shutters an afterthought.

Or have I grown Gulliver-like?

Decades ago a hot August day swallowed me whole.

The midwife coxed me open

to admit your blue face

expelling you into light.

Breath flew into the room.

The porch I thought was huge

sits ten feet from a Lilliputian street

not wide enough for two cars to pass

without scraping paint.

I see the neighbor’s drilled holes in his walls,

dun-colored polka dots for blown-in cellulose.

Good, I think. Someone is keeping things up.

Insulation works on memory too.

Our tiny bodies in motion in a past that abides

in the town where we left it.

12.27.2010