Returning

I have these boxes
in my garage
titled
“Emergency Writing Box”
1, 2 and 3
Not good
to have your life’s mission
in boxes
in the garage
and numbered
but
no apologies
for my mothering and career life
swamping
my creative life.

Only
a determination
to return
to it.

And so
I picked up
Emergency Writing Box 1
and found
tucked neatly at the bottom
Coco’s and Feliza’s thesis
and memories
of Santa Cruz, La Habana, Albuquerque, Berkeley
-quiet conversations
storm my mind.

Bound and hardback
more than one hundred pages of ideas and passion
and years of research
contained between the covers,
I flash back to our present.

Is me, standing, in my pajamas at 2pm
with gold slippers on
in the musty garage
holding the Emergency Writing Box #1
while
baby sleeps softly in our bedroom, six-year old
plays online Kirby games, and husband, weary from
the Holiday bustle, retreats to the NFL website,
a metaphor for
the condition and challenges of my writing life?

Knowing that Leo
crosses his fingers
every time I head for the garage
to not bring in
one more book
to our nine hundred and fifty square foot space
I defiantly
tuck my girl’s theses
under my arm
and stride across my backyard
into my house
with certainty
that I will clear a space
for their work
as a symbol
and reminder
that our creative work
has a place
on the front-burner
of our lives.

para Coco y Feliza