by Sarah Kay
learned to ride a bike, swerving around puddles on rainy afternoons.
This is where I learned to drive a car in the hardware store parking
lot; how to kiss a boy with sand between my toes.
Time goes to Montauk to take a break. It loosens its belt, takes a seat
on the front porch next to my father and his Weber grill. It putters
around the kitchen with my mother while she kneads her homemade
sourdough bread, and chuckles when it catches her speaking out loud
to herself—telling nobody in particular—We should roast some peaches
tonight. I’ll bet oatmeal would be delicious for breakfast tomorrow if we roasted
some peaches tonight.
Time stalls in Montauk. I am seven years old. My little brother is
three. He splashes in a baby pool, while I brave the full-length
Olympic-sized one by myself. Chubby in my one-piece, my thighs
brush against each other as I tread water in the shallow end. I look up
and see an older girl: perfect in her bikini, tall, and tan, and probably
on her way to meet her handsome Prince Charming boyfriend.
She glows as she glides past me, tosses her hair like she has all the answers,
and I wonder if I will ever be a woman like that. That summer,
I learn how to wish on stars.
I am twelve years old. My little brother is eight. He can surf better
than I can, and I hate it. I wait until he and all the other surfers are
done for the day before paddling my fat sponge of a board out past
the breakers. There is nobody left in the water. The setting sun
makes the ocean glow golden. I tuck my legs up. That summer,
I learn how to be alone.
I am sixteen. My brother is twelve and at the beach. I am reading
magazines on the couch when my mother appears in the living room
holding her laptop, the only computer in the house. My brother has
downloaded his first porn video, and my mother is trying to decide
what should be done about it. That night when I go to check my
email, I discover she has made a new folder on the desktop and
labeled it, PK’s Porn. That summer, I learn how to love my parents.
There are some things you cannot learn in New York City.
There are places where fishnets do not mean stockings,
where the learning happens in between moments, like after
a wave passes, and you break the surface gasping for air.
I am twenty-two. The landmarks are the same. The same stretch of
beach, same hardware store parking lot. Some of the names have
changed. The pool hasn’t. I make my way to the shallow end and
wade in slow. In Montauk, I can take my time. I look up to see a
little girl, chubby in her one-piece, gripping the wall and watching
me enter the water, her eyes the size of summer tomatoes and just as
red from all the chlorine-rubbing. I almost speak to her. But before
I can, there is a splash behind me. A woman well into her
fifties—chubby in her one-piece—has cannonballed into the deep
end. She comes up coughing, flailing, water in her nose. She comes
up laughing. The little girl giggles. And me? Well, I am laughing, too.
MY PARENTS ON THEIR WAY HOME FROM A WEDDING
When they pick up the phone,
all I can hear is Simon and Garfunkel
blaring in the background. For a few
seconds, it is only this: wind static
and the strum of guitars, the simple
harmonies of open windows and streaked sunlight.
Then my father’s barrel-bass chocolate growl,
my mother’s piccolo-breath,
they are laughing through the speaker phone,
telling me about the ceremony, how lovely it was.
There are trees sliding into one another, faster
than they have time to count. So many flowers,
they say. What a beautiful dress. I was calling
to tell them about something sour, something
less blossom and more thorn, but I inhale;
swallow. It can wait. They are laughing through
the speaker phone, they are laughing, and they
are driving on a highway they have not been on before.
My mother says, Oops, I think we’ve gotten lost!
We might have to call you back. They forget that
I am on the line, point out street corners that
are named the wrong names, notice trees they
could have sworn they passed sometime before.
SLIVERS
When we were three,
Sophia and I were taken
to the beach in Hither Hills.
A seagull came and stole our
bagels, the sand was awful hot,
but the water was perfect on
our warm bellies. Fathers lifted
us high into the air and we squealed,
mothers looked out from under
the beach umbrellas. We went
for a walk on the wooden pier
and both wound up with splinters
in our left feet. Matching splinters!
Matching bathing suits! Matching
wails as fathers propped us up on
the hood of the station wagon,
mothers found the tweezers
in the first aid kit, took turns
alternating between holding ice cubes,
wrestling our wriggling,
and digging out the culprits.
I don’t think I actually remember
this day. I don’t think the scene
in my head is real—it must instead
be the retelling of the story that
I have memorized and rehearsed—
that my mind has filled in the gaps.
And yet, it would explain why,
twenty-one years later, we
can feel the phantom hurt inside
each other; how our pains align
themselves in symmetry, or in
complement, like mirror selves.
How—when the phone rings,
your voice on the other end
allows me to release my wail,
reach out to squeeze your hand.
We dig the slivers from ourselves
as best we can. When the
hurt remains, you, dearest friend,
will recognize my limp. You will
whimper with me, fully. You will
return with me to the hot sand,
to the menacing gulls, to the water
sweeping us into new and better days.
BROTHER
You jaywalked your way out of the womb.
I would recognize you anywhere
by the hiccup in your swagger. Tell me,
where in the world did you find all that thunder?
There have never been any seat belts on your side of the car.
You have always known the better magic tricks.
You told me once that I was just the first draft,
and I’m inclined to believe you, but you came
with a lot more pieces to assemble and
Mom and Dad never got the manual.
Your compass always points north.
But it’s a bit of a crapshoot as to whether or not
you’ll ever walk in that direction. I like that.
It keeps people on their toes.
On the merry-go-round of your life, the carousel ponies
are all narwhals. Their horns point straight up.
The day they build you a constellation, it will be
the entire F Train spread across the Milky Way.
You will be a satellite that dips in and out of every car
t
he moment the train comes to a stop, pissing off
everybody on the subway platform, and kicking up
stardust in your wake. You can solve a Law & Order
episode before the first commercial break.
Once, when you were seven, you came into the kitchen
and asked Mom, Does my name begin with the letter P
because P is the sixteenth letter of the alphabet and
I was born on June sixteenth, and is Sarah just Sarah because
S is the nineteenth letter of the alphabet and
she was born on the nineteenth day of June?
And when Mom said no, you nodded your head
and left the room mumbling to yourself,
Okay. Just salt and pepper then.
You are my favorite stick of dynamite.
You are the opposite of a rubber band.
There are so many things I would tell you
if I thought that you would listen
and so many more you would tell me
if you believed I would understand.
I hope you know that you were never meant to wear my shadow.
In fact, I’m the one who always steals your shoes.
But is that my sweatshirt you’re wearing? It’s okay, you can keep it.
I won’t tell your secret. In fact, it really does look better on you.
HANDS
People used to tell me that I had beautiful hands.
They told me so often, in fact, that one day I started to
believe them; I started listening. Until I asked my
photographer father, Hey Daddy, could I be a hand model?
To which Dad laughed and said, No way.
I don’t remember the reason he gave,
and it probably didn’t matter anyway.
I would have been upset, but there were
far too many crayons to grab, too many
stuffed animals to hold, too many ponytails to tie,
too many homework assignments to write,
too many boys to wave at, too many years to grow.
We used to have a game, my dad and I, about holding hands.
We held hands everywhere. In the car, on the bus, on the street,
at a movie. And every time, either he or I would whisper a
great big number to the other, pretending that we were
keeping track of how many times we had held hands,
that we were sure this one had to be eight-million,
two-thousand, seven-hundred and fifty-three.
Hands learn. More than minds do.
Hands learn how to hold other hands.
How to grip pencils and mold poetry.
How to memorize computer keys
and telephone buttons in the dark.
How to tickle pianos and grip bicycle handles.
How to dribble a basketball and how to peel apart
pages of Sunday comics that somehow always seem to stick together.
They learn how to touch old people and how to hold babies.
I love hands like I love people. They are the maps and
compasses with which we navigate our way through life,
feeling our way over mountains passed and valleys crossed;
they are our histories.
Some people read palms to tell your future,
I read hands to tell your past.
Each scar marks a story worth telling. Each callused palm,
each cracked knuckle, is a broken bottle, a missed punch,
a rusty nail, years in a factory.
Now, I watch Middle Eastern hands
clenched in Middle Eastern fists.
Pounding against each other like war drums,
each country sees their fists as warriors,
and others as enemies, even if fists alone are only hands.
But this is not a poem about politics; hands are not about politics.
This is a poem about love.
And fingers. Fingers interlocked like a beautiful accordion of flesh
or a zipper of prayer. One time, I grabbed my dad’s hand
so that our fingers interlocked perfectly, but he changed his
position, saying, No, that hand-hold is for your mom.
Kids high five, sounds of hand-to-hand combat
instead mark camaraderie and teamwork.
Now, grown up, we learn to shake hands.
You need a firm handshake, but not too tight, don’t be limp now,
don’t drop too soon, but for God’s sake don’t hold on too long…
but…hands are not about politics?
When did it become so complicated?
I always thought it simple.
The other day, my dad looked at my hands, as if seeing them
for the first time. And with laughter behind his eyelids,
with all the seriousness a man of his humor could muster, he said,
You’ve got nice hands. You could’ve been a hand model.
And before the laughter can escape me,
I shake my head at him,
and squeeze his hand.
Eight-million, two-thousand, seven-hundred and fifty-four.
JELLYFISH
It was somewhere in between the last day of school and the first, somewhere in between morning and nightfall, somewhere in between New York City and the very tip of Long Island—there was a nine-year-old girl somewhere in between the shoreline and the sand dunes, scanning the horizon like a hawk. Like an Amazon warrior. Like a great cavalry captain. Like Charlemagne on the morning before he took his final enemy: Jellyfish. There were jellyfish on my beach, in my ocean! And that silhouette of a soldier? That was me.
I was the nine-year-old protector. I was the Conqueror of the Jellyfish. I was the Vanquisher of the Venomous. And I was armed. With my plastic bucket and my legs. (Which were strong enough to plant against the pull of the sinking tide, so I could wait until one of those throbbing, red and purple, translucent bubbles of death drifted unsuspecting into the claws of my plastic trap.) And my legs were fast enough to dart back up onto the beach, where I would toss my captives mercilessly into the sand pit I had dug—never stopping for breath! (Only for a juice box, in the cool shade of our green-and-white umbrella.)
I was a man on a mission. Which is to say—girl with a bucket. (But in the bright glare of late August, those two look an awful lot alike.) That bucket was sword and shield. That hole was prison and redemption. There was no repentance. I had no guilt. I was risking life and limb to protect everything I knew to be sacred. And you have to understand: I really believed it was so.
I lost count after twenty-two. The motions became fluid, almost memorized. As day began to sink and pink and orange began to creep their way into the crystal of afternoon sky, seeping like ink into the ocean around my ankles, I grew weary. Mom and Dad called from the beach: Time to turn in my bucket! Time to stop killing the enemy! Time to start thinking about what I wanted for dinner.
And that’s when it hit. The one that got away. Quick like lightning, blinding like gunfire, piercing like the point of a spear. I was hit and I was down. I was down hard and fast; it was a hit-and-run. That tentacle was gone before I even had time to register pain. And that pattern lasted all summer long like a railroad track down the back of my hand: a battle scar to mark the war I had fought.
And somewhere in between then and now irony slipped its way into my vocabulary. Laughter became the antidote for guilt. Sacrifice grew to be a Band-Aid for shame. And unnecessary death became the nightmare that rode me piggyback. Somewhere in between then and now I learned that every move you make echoes outwards from your body like ripples on the ocean from a skipping stone. It is what has taught me that Karma is as tangible as the taste of seawater. Somewhere, somebody has a scorecard, so that eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth really does come around to bite you in the ass.
What is it about immortality? With the right sword and shield, we think we can fend off anger, fear, and hatred. I
f our legs are strong enough, we think we can outrun age, loss, and death. That we can always truly live as Master of all the Jellyfish.
EVAPORATE
Today lasted so long, by the time I arrived at nightfall,
I had forgotten that this morning was this morning.
It seemed so far away, like yesterday, or the day before.
And days and days and days unfolded in the hours between
when first I woke and when now I sit. I notice minutes
move, much more than when I was younger.
Today I looked at my face in a mirror.
I braided my hair. I put on a dress.
Today a child shook my hand like a grown-up
and told me she was in the sixth grade.
It sounded like she said she wasn’t the sick grey
which made me think that is what she thought I was.
I am watching parts of me evaporate like sidewalk water.
This wet grey, this nighttime dew, gone before morning.
THE LADDER
Whenever I hurt myself, my mother says
it is the universe’s way of telling me to
slow down. She also tells me to put some
coconut oil on it. It doesn’t matter what it
is. She often hides stones underneath my
pillow when I come home for the weekend.
The stones are a formula for sweet dreams
and clarity. I dig them out from the sheets,
she tells me what each one is for. My throat
hurts, so she grinds black pepper into a
spoonful of honey, makes me eat the entire
thing. My mother knows how to tie knots
like a ship captain, but doesn’t know how
I got that sailor mouth. She falls asleep
in front of the TV only until I turn it off,
shouts, I was watching that! The sourdough
she bakes on Fridays is older than I am.
She sneaks it back and forth across the country
when she flies by putting the starter in small
containers next to a bag of carrots.
They think it’s ranch dressing, she giggles.
She makes tea by hand. Nettles, slippery elm,
turmeric, cinnamon—my mother is a recipe
for warm throats and belly laughs. Once,
she fell off of a ladder when I was three.
She says all she was worried about was
