In Manila, she handed it
to me wordlessly, and
I blushed:
a little hand-held fan
to preserve my image—
to make space for me,
Me. All of twenty-five and
invited to speak about what runs
deep, underground, half-found.
I bought one in turn: huge,
lilac, with tan fronds.
I wanted to make space too.
And I did. In Tito’s bunker-turned-arthouse;
a grounded airplane with a broken AC;
the New York subway.
When it snapped, I cried over
the splinters, buried in a drawer
in a home no longer mine.
I found the next one in Barcelona.
Cheap, neon green, a Cubist print
full of sideways faces.
Six months later—yesterday. Back
in New York, finally unrestricted,
I got back on the subway
and after more than a year
of six feet of space, I had none.
Feeling myself bleed into the crowd I
planted my feet and stood,
fan clasped in hand as a little
talisman, in the middle of the car.
I meant only to stand and stake
a space, but soon I felt them:
three sets of little eyes, watching.
None, I think, were older than three:
two little Hispanic children on one side
and on the other, a little black girl,
staring without reservation at me
and the fan I was waving, unthinking.
Tiny Jamila, fearless, complained aloud
of the heat to her mother and I got the memo:
I fanned her too, and in exchange she told me
her favorite toy: her Barbie. Square deal.
Too shy to speak, the brother and sister
talked in whispers and twinkling eyes when
I fanned them too, their mother watching fondly.
Later, I watched another, drowsing
into her mother’s side: cornrows with beads,
wide-leg jeans, soft blue-furred sandals on dainty crossed feet.
Little pilgrims, little loves,
you embody what we grown ones
both long for and are afraid of:
You grant us the tremendous courtesy
of space. In your eyes we lengthen
and expand, stand tall and alive–
something most of us forgot how to
extend to others; we lost it
in the fear of passing disease, or
in protecting our inner lives.
It is an art, maybe, that most of us
are no longer big enough for,
But you, paradoxically.
You see with sharper eyes. With
deeper; you see enough.
Though mine have seen more, you
humble me, little pilgrims. May
there always be those to see you
along your way and grant you space:
to fan your golden flames
into a bright and
unquenchable light.
(Summer 2021)
At the Still Point 