Dear Papa,
Today, you forgot me.
You were supposed to pick me up at five,
but you weren't there, so I called home, to ask Mama what time you had left.
And when you picked up, your voice was laced with sleep,
and the end of a dream grew like a vine, into my ears and through me.
When I was little, I ate watermelon seeds and sunflower seeds,
and you always said I'd have a garden out my ears.
Once, I licked the pollen from a calla lily, to grow them for the garden.
I told you in giggles,
and Mama sent me to wash out my mouth, because
the turmeric-yellow centers are a little
toxic.
Nothing ever grew out of my ears,
but little seeds planted in them grew inwards,
and I became.
I hear whispers and love songs and car horns,
rain on roofs and the radio turned low,
and they all sound like sighs.
There is a language in sighs,
and silences.
And the sigh at the end of your dream was one I knew.
I loved and hated hearing it, like a favorite story that you've
told a hundred times,
or noticing a perfect sunset, that signals the end of something more than a day.
I'm sorry I woke you.
go back to sleep.
Love,
yr daughter
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