Chase the Sun

Boy, why are you crying?
I’m not.
(I wipe tears from my eye-corners.)
You have two brothers in beds
beside you
and a dog trying to
bark me back
through the window
and into the night.
Even my shadow’s
up and left
me.

I ^spring to my feet
because Peter Pan doesn’t _crouch
and I’ve half a mind
my shadow will
follow.
It doesn’t.

Boy, why are you crying?
I don’t cry.
If I did, it’d be because
there’s a lump in my throat
blocking my crow.
But I don’t cry.

I TipToe closer to the bed
So I can look at you
You’re a girl
but what I notice
is that the covers
heaped around you
keep you warm,
and you’re so safe
a stranger
in your room at night
doesn’t frighten you.

Boy, why are you crying?
Because I’m scared
but Peter Pan can’t be.
Because an old, rough pirate
wants to kill me.
Because your London winter
is cold
to a boy made of dreams.

Because the soap won’t stick
and my eyes won’t dry
and yours are telling me
I’m sorry
and nobody’s allowed to
pity Peter Pan.

(but on nights
when a chill blows in
and sets the curtains
rustling like monsters
or pirates are hidden there,
i wish they would.)

Boy, why are you crying?
Don’t ask me that.
Please.
Sew my shadow back on
and let me pretend
I am not. 

Oh, you know, well, I learned late last night that physicists think we live in a multiverse. They think there are an infinite number of alternate universes in which everything we know is wrong.

Did you know that, Uncle Bud?
I don’t think you did,
because that seems like a thing you would have shared.

These physicists think every choice we make has permanent and irrevocable consequences. Robert Frost’s Two Roads not only exist and are scientifically significant, but even if you take the path no one else chose, in another universe, you chose the worn one. In another universe, the worn one was the one less travelled-by. In another universe, the paths exist, but not you.

No, I only wish I were kidding.
It’s hard for me to find words for
how much I hate this idea,
and I’m an English major
(who’s not married to the stability and
reality of facts and figures, who if she’s
being honest, is barely acquainted with them).

These universes continue and fracture until there are so many more of them than we can count, though the physicists would tell me there’s some universe containing a more mathematically talented me who can count past infinity (and there’s probably another universe where infinity doesn’t exist).

I don’t think you knew that,
because that seems like the kind of thing
you would have taught me back when
you could still get me to play soccer
and grass between bare toes didn’t itch.

I ask the people sitting in my room telling me things, the people whom I think are my friends but you know, in some other universe, aren’t, for proof and they tell me there isn’t any. Not just of this, either. Of anything.

And I just
fucking
refuse to believe that.

There are things that I know.
They might not be many or scientific in nature,
but I know them.

I know the music words make
when someone arranges them
on the page in the right order.

I know when to admit that the
riptide rocking me at the heels
is too much.

I know that when my mom says
we are leaving in two minutes,
we’ll actually be leaving in ten,
or more likely thirty.

I know that when I was small
and you threw me up on your
shoulders I tied my arms around
you so you would feel better,
not because I ever thought you’d
let me fall.

I know you were here once,
even if now you are not.

I’ve heard of physicists making data romantic to appeal to people like me. I’ve read what Lawrence Krauss says about my being made of stardust, and I’d like to believe it. Maybe one day I’ll come around to this universe thing. I’m trying.

But it scares me,
Uncle Bud,
flat-out scares me,
and I don’t like it
and for a little while I’ll be stubborn
the way I always was with you.

What keeps getting me about it, the idea that won’t let me go, is, well—

I may be made of shattered stars
and the idea that stars can be dead
is terrifying, but in some other universe,
you are not. 

Tie me with Odyssean knots, I beg them,

but let me hear. They say this is ridiculous;

They’ve heard it before, and it’s not worth the hurt.

I don’t care.

I like it when you forget to do your hair.

Your awkwardness is charming.

You could never be too smart for me.

And where have these words been all my life?

Myth can’t prepare me for this:

Temptation’s words are honey, trickling down my throat

Smooth and soft enough I don’t realize that I’m screaming.

I struggle so hard against ropes; they rub away skin.

Then his mahogany voice splinters.

And leave the swells to poor Poseidon:

I’m happy to drown in despair.

Because nobody, not even Nobody,

Spouts such flawless flattery;

Words alone held me transfixed,

And my desperate desire deceives.

I shut my begging, betraying mouth

And they remove their earplugs.

They ask if it was worth it.

We don’t plan to circle back;

Still, I stuff wax into ears echoing

With siren song,

just in case. 

I know you were my home, once— that you fed, sheltered, carried me;

You loved me before I knew how and when I try to thank you for that,

It’s not enough.

But I have to have a life without you now.

You try to hang on, but the little girl you know isn’t here.

I’m not the girl who hid, who imagined, who conjured

From a single bush of honeysuckle the Hundred Acre Wood.

I’m not the baby who flat out insisted God give her a sister,

Not the girl who extracted kids from their school bus and the

Black box in the den so you could have dinner with them.

I’m still actively unathletic, but I’m not any longer

Always cantering wildly towards the opposite goal.

And I am her, because adulthood is this—

It’s learning how to be that girl again when the world won’t let me.

It’s remembering who she was, digging through the costume chest

Inexplicably painted with a surprisingly majestic and somehow soaring

Duck, finding the Belle dress and rubbing the still-starched pinafore

Back and forth between no longer soft fingers and remembering

Always what time would have you forget.

And I can see you when I turn over my shoulder.

You get smaller as I ride away and you purse your lips

So hard you bite the top one as you watch Dad let go

Of my bike seat

            And you lean forward.

.

With your eyes, you beg the universe that I’ll never know

What a skinned knee feels like. With your steadying gaze

You pray I will never

                        Catapult over handlebars.

The skin you’re biting

So hard it might bleed implores that the                   will stay where it’s meant to

                                                                   ground

and not be so anxious to make my acquaintance that it rushes through empty space

to meet my outstretched hands.

but mom.

Do you remember that moment just before the sun-kissed asphalt

reminds you you’re imperfect? Remember that half-second when your weight was

negligible?

If you do then I’m asking you, begging you, please—

If you cry every time I mention a home away from you,

I won’t learn to fly.