The Space Between Us
by Mary Jo Balistreri
In a land where stone
takes one breath
every thousand years, I
watch my father sleep.
Rivers of his body rise
and fall,
skin map-thin at 93,
arteries bottle-necked, narrowed.
Heat sears day, dims distant
sand dunes to mirage.
His eyelids twitch, a leg
muscle contracts.
He awakens with a
start—perhaps currents
strange and powerful
burrow
through his memory’s
alchemy and pass
between us, this landscape
that throbs
with ancient rhythms and
ancestral pulses.
Half asleep, he shuffles
to the door, brushes my arm
aside and steps into the
sun. He whistles and waits.
A quail in elaborate
topknot and desert fatigues
struts from under the
orange tree.
The bird calls back but
stops, sociable only at a distance.
Dad knows not to move. In
a few minutes,
she takes her nine
offspring
in the opposite direction,
legs spinning
like pinwheels. He watches
until they’re gone,
the way he used to watch
me.
Later, he strolls among
other affections—oleander,
bougainvillea. His fingers brush the vine of flowers,
and I remember his gentle
touch as he lingers
by blooms of deepest pink.
We rode on the Aerial
Bridge
against his chest, patted my back, soothed my cries.
It
will be okay he said over and over as we rose
higher and higher.
Memory jolts like an alarm as
he leans toward
the cacti, the spiny seeds of bursage.
He lifts his head to the sun, my panic spiraling.
the cacti, the spiny seeds of bursage.
He lifts his head to the sun, my panic spiraling.
Like
the fresh smell of creosote after a rain,
love’s
brief moment stuns.
I
take his hand as we walk toward the house,
inhale
the fragrance of Here. Now.
Breath
that takes me forward, breath
that
will take him home.
~ first published in Mobius
