It's what I strive for every time I open my mouth - that impossible connection. They feel exactly what you feel at the same time that you feel it. Impossible is trying to connect in this world, trying to hold onto others while things are blowing up around you, knowing that while you're speaking, they aren't just waiting for their turn to talk - they hear you. In the original story God told Sarah she could do something impossible and she laughed, because the first Sarah, she didn't know what to do with impossible.Īnd me? Well, neither do I, but I see the impossible every day. My parents named me Sarah, which is a biblical name. So no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets, I keep trying, hoping that one day I'll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed. My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth.īut in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away, leaving only a wristwatch or a diary page. My knees still buckle every time I get on a stage. When my Grandpa Genji died, I was only five years old, but I took my mom by the hand and told her, "Don't worry, he'll come back as a baby."Īnd yet, for someone who's apparently done this already, I still haven't figured anything out yet. When I was born, my mom says I looked around the whole hospital room with a stare that said, "This? I've done this before." She says I have old eyes. The long-lasting damage of nuclear radiation caused an entire city and its population to turn into powder. When they bombed Hiroshima, the explosion formed a mini-supernova, so every living animal, human or plant that received direct contact with the rays from that sun was instantly turned to ash.Īnd what was left of the city soon followed. It seemed as improbable as the survival of one of those late-spring butterflies-you know, those little white ones-I sometimes saw wobbling through the air, always just millimeters away from smacking itself against a windshield. I would hold him in my arms and wait to cross the street and would think how absurd it was that my child, that any child, could expect to survive this life. Every day, your first thought is not “I love him” but “How is he?” The world, overnight, rearranges itself into an obstacle course of terrors. You have never known fear until you have a child, and maybe that is what tricks us into thinking that it is more magnificent, because the fear itself is more magnificent. But it is a singular love, because it is a love whose foundation is not physical attraction, or pleasure, or intellect, but fear. I didn’t feel that before Jacob, and I didn’t feel that after. Continued abuse of our services will cause your IP address to be blocked indefinitely.I have never been one of those people-I know you aren’t, either-who feels that the love one has for a child is somehow a superior love, one more meaningful, more significant, and grander than any other. Please fill out the CAPTCHA below and then click the button to indicate that you agree to these terms. If you wish to be unblocked, you must agree that you will take immediate steps to rectify this issue. If you do not understand what is causing this behavior, please contact us here. If you promise to stop (by clicking the Agree button below), we'll unblock your connection for now, but we will immediately re-block it if we detect additional bad behavior.
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