<\/p>\n
At the lake, I waited for my mother
\nwith the pink and violet lilacs at the waterfront,
\nlistening for the sounds of her car.<\/p>\n
I was eight, tucking the velvet clusters into my hair.
\nMy hands smelled like spring and metal:
\nlake water and rust.<\/p>\n
For a moment, I could hear her
\nin my grandparents\u2019 driveway,
\nor in their house, out watering their garden.<\/p>\n
The vanilla smell of ponderosa;
\nthe delicate puffs of cottonwoods.
\nNearby, the ghost of the Ice House<\/p>\n
was still a bruise on the upturned soil.
\nThe relic from my grandfather, who had heaved
\nlake ice with pick and prong, was gone.<\/p>\n
That summer, we grew corn and beefsteak tomatoes
\nmy mother wrapped in paper towels.
\nShe salted them, ate them like apples.<\/p>\n
Now, those lilacs grow back when I think of spring,
\nof days before the ice prongs and picks
\nbecame decorations on the wall.<\/p>\n
The gnarled pink grows from hands that stretch
\nfrom wherever I am and up through any ceiling.
\nThey punch fresh holes through plaster.<\/p>\n
Old beams raise themselves and soon
\nit smells like lake and lilac and pine.
\nThe Ice House restores itself board by board.<\/p>\n
I find myself returned, eight again.
\nMy mother is pulling in the driveway.
\nI pet the lake into her hair, and then we\u2019re walking<\/p>\n
past the Ice House, toward thick indigo and pink
\nand cottonwoods at the water’s edge.
\nIn memory, the trees are always in bloom.<\/p>\n
Footprints, grainy in the dim light,
\nwalk past again, with armloads of towels,
\na silver air mattress tucked beneath an arm.<\/p>\n
Grandma picks out lake stones with her netted shoes
\nand tosses them to shore.
\nThe scent of lilac mixes with murky lakebed<\/p>\n
and coffee or the briny scent off the Sound.
\nI lie on the couch, on the dock, dangling my legs
\nas mom floats by on air.<\/p>\n
The way you let your heart squish
\nagainst tissue, let your nails dig
\ninto your palms, the armrests,
\nand you\u2019re so acutely alive, so aware
\nof your body, imagining
\na safe, pink aura
\naround the skin of the craft–
\naround the shell of your skin.<\/p>\n
You hold your breath, cup your hands
\nin a sort of prayer
\nwith every bump that sends
\nsparks of discomfort,
\nthe trillions of neural pathways
\nthat light up, not unlike
\nthe hundred miles of wires around you,
\nalive with electricity.<\/p>\n
There are twenty-five feet
\nof small and large intestine
\nin the average human body.
\nIt will absorb ninety percent
\nof the Ginger Ale
\nthat soothes the nervous burble.<\/p>\n
The Germans call it \u201cflying thing.\u201d
\nIts aluminum membrane,
\ntitanium, steel, and composites
\nremind you of your skin, fillings, marrow, sinew,
\nthat heart of yours still thumping,
\ndrumming on your rib cage
\nas if it could echo through this cabin.<\/p>\n
You must breathe the slow, deep,
\ncounted breaths
\nthat will slow your mind, dull its focus.
\nThe beverage carts, snacks,
\ncoffee, and cologne
\nmake it all seem so mundane
\nlike the miracle-that\u2019s-not-a-miracle of birth.<\/p>\n
You once read that pilots and copilots
\nmust eat different meals and one in six
\nAmericans will get food poisoning this year.
\nYou know that an average commercial plane
\nweighs approximately ninety-thousand pounds,
\na 747 has over six million parts,
\na human body has two-hundred-six bones,
\nand sitting in the tail increases survival
\nby forty percent.<\/p>\n
Above all, you know
\nthat right now, in this very second,
\nas your heart squeezes its tight fist
\nand you exhale slowly, inhale with control,
\nthere are over sixty thousand
\nhuman bodies in flight.<\/p>\n
Panicles At the lake, I waited for my mother with the pink and violet lilacs at the waterfront, listening for the sounds of her car. I was eight, tucking the velvet clusters into my hair. My hands smelled like spring and metal: lake water and rust. For a moment, I could hear her in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8422,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1354"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1419,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1354\/revisions\/1419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/236magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}