MY HUSBAND AND I TRAVEL
MY HUSBAND AND I TRAVEL
down the dirt road. California-born workers, we are.
I don’t visualize: there is a railroad, and there is
my husband.
Who are they to say that I am unfathomable?
The year is eighteen-twenty-two. I learned to count from my mother, who came from
a place called Canton
(and I say it like can-town, like they did in the brownstone, where I stayed; where are you from?)
and I learned my work through my father, who came from
a place called Carolina
and I learned to run because of my husband, and because I am a broken woman,
and because I do not have a definitive answer when asked to explain my hazel-dark eyes.
I hold my husband’s hand like
a grudge, perform like the Oriental dancers we saw back home,
wait for a resolve and fall into the dirt again.
It’s gravel, after all,
and it’s ivy, ivy like a name.
(While I would name an ivy bush, my husband would name a seashell.)
I talk like a Californian, and pronounce my own name wrong, and say CAR-olina, because it’s wrong.
He asked me when we met: do you dance?
(And I don’t, of course I don’t, who would teach me?)
But I told him I do, like a woman from Canton with bound feet and broken bones but still leap and twirl for their husbands.
So when we dance,
we dance,
and I know he is excited by the prospect of the Orient (even though it is
just half, and not much at that)
I tiptoe down the rail as my husband sleeps next to it, knowing there is no train, and there will be no train,
and he likes to pretend we’re young, and I like to pretend we’re old,
this way, he can pretend I am an agile woman from Canton,
and I can pretend I’ve retired for the night.