Be Both

a part of the sum.

Sometimes I let this space scare me. Allow it to feel monolithic and mighty. As if it is not the sum of its parts, when really it is only exactly that.

I keep on reading my old work like I used to be more interesting, like I lost something. Perhaps I did. The ability to say only what I am thinking, this need to somehow expect something greater, as if the moment itself is not great enough.

Sometimes I have terrible thoughts that take the space out of my stomach, my organs all collapsing on one another, a vacuum. I imagine someone dropping a knife in the kitchen while my son walks past, or the car driving past turning into our house, how all the windows might crumple.

My son tells me with a desperate urgency that a hamster can run one million miles an hour. I do not know if this is true, but I want more than anything to feel an urgency like he does, to feel something so important it will literally burn my lips if I hold it for one more instant.

The peach tree out back is flowering and the mountains turn pink at sunset, but I miss the ocean. When I rock my daughter to sleep, I close my eyes and imagine I am looking out the window of my old beach house as the water crashes on that huge, familiar rock. I summon a peace so deep she can feel it and fall asleep safely against me. I am, to her, both the sea and the rock.