creek write

Inside their ears, sounds pool like water you cup in your hands and raise to your lips while your mother yells, "Don't drink that!" because it comes from the creek and we only trust tap water, and I watch a thin film flow off frog's eggs down to the rapids and hope it's not the glue that holds egg to egg because when you have no hands or feet except as a thought deep down where your heart beats, how can you stop yourself from floating away? I get nervous when my ears ring, like its the distant shouting of forgotten things. I try to remember how my grandmother's hands unfold over mine but am almost sure I'm making it up. I wonder what she's doing now, but my mind always stops at the torn hem of her rag quilt, lingers on the crystalline handle of her second favorite cane, pauses at the protruding hip bone of her best friend, her cat, Paddy, and can't move on to her eyes. I look at my own sometimes, orange bursting out from the pupil like a thirsty sunflower grown inside, the winter blue of ice framing its head from behind, out the window, while it wonders if cold is something made up, and why anyone would think of that. I pretend the blue is my grandmother's, but hers is really more of a forget-me-not blue like the blue blue blossoms she embroiders onto her own handkerchiefs. I question what she fears forgetting, wonder how anyone can remember eighty-two years worth of loss, love, babies, conversations, late-night snacks, creek wading, the water colder than you think it'll be, passing by your ankles and surrounding frog's eggs like a palm holds water, like your ears hold sound. When I close my eyes, I think of this and float.