62 days

Minus 41 hours so far. So lets say, roughly, 60 days since my life went upside down.

Not-Jail and Certified

For the last 9 weeks or so, I have been occasionally grateful that I hadn't gotten arrested that day. Well, I got word yesterday that no one intentions on arresting me. Now, how nifty is that??? Not only that, but I have been examined, analyzed and can prove that beyond reasonable doubt that I am not, in fact, a monster.

Schmultzy, but timely

To Hold

Before I left for camp, my mother sewed my name
with a firm stitch into everything I owned.
She even looped a string of nametapes
through the scissors I keep to this day on my desk.

She wanted to be sure, when she sent me into the woods,
she'd get the right child back at summer's end,
that I'd not be left in the laundry drum
like an unmarked sock. Others—

careless lazy mothers-favored marking pens,
illegible black letters bleeding into stain.

My mother knew nothing was permanent.
She'd seen how fast a child could disappear:
her two dead sisters with names like flowers:
Lily, Rose, their summery smells, indelible voices.

That's why she sewed my name so tight
on all four sides, double-knotted the knots.
So I wouldn't forget when she sent me off
into the wet, the dark, the wild: I was hers.
Jean Nordhaus