I have, really, no recollection of existence
prior to moving to the two-story redwood
house on Middle St. before first grade.
But in one hazy, sunflower-shaded memory,
painted by the late afternoon sun filtering
through an upper story window, I can
almost feel the tips of my soft, pink and brown fingers
pulling the sill, the stretch and bend of my tiptoes
seeking a better view.
Outside the window is a yard.
A back yard, I think, with patchy sepia and yellow-green grass.
There may have been other things in the yard,
I don’t recall. My straining eyes are pinned to
the small, royal purple sport convertible.
What, I wonder now, made that car so enthralling
to a toddling girlchild? Perhaps, it's smallness, shiny wheels
and chrome bumpers flashing like silverfish in the sun.
Or the two bucket seats that seemed just right-size for me.
Or maybe the curve of the panels, plump like plums,
that gave the whole thing a somehow supple appearance.
I know he is in the apartment, the man my mother would marry,
but his bell bottom jeans, scruffy beard under a gravity-defying bounce
of frowzy curls are out of sight. Out of mind.
I remember nothing of their courtship. Nothing of the wedding,
or the move, nothing but a snapshot moment of standing
in my first-grade classroom, adoption judge in a stern dress suit,
declaring him my father. We did not celebrate, or embrace,
just thanked the judge and left.
I was never allowed as a passenger in the purple coupe,
even after the adoption. I would simply sit
in our greening new yard each spring, watching
while he waxed and waxed, until his face
shone back at him in the sun.
