On June 20, 2020, we created a river.
We started by the pool.
We ended by the gate.
You chalked a jellyfish family, a sun, a
pirate ship and other circular things with
tentacles.
I made alligators, mermaids, flamingos,
whales, dolphins, hippos,
surfers, coral, and clams
agape with pearls.
It was almost the fourth month of
quarantine but only the first month of us
co-mingling again.
7 people in a pod—mommy, daddy, baby, grandpa, grandma, me and
you.
There was no heat wave.
Our coast wasn’t on fire yet.
But George Floyd was definitely
dead, and I was on the
second month of daily
panic attacks.
No school, no friends, not even a scooter
date for you.
You were socially starved, and we were
hungry to have you back in
our arms.
We played with the chalk for an hour.
It’s captured on tape.
There are so many things I
forget in a day
in this year.
There are so many things I’m
trying to remember—to tug
close like a fish on a line.
I love catching fish like you from
rivers.
This year keeps teaching me that I am
small.
I worry so much about how you are
small but will become big.
I think about how your
future grows from your past.
Will the confluence be
gentle?
Ish?
We draw a river.
I know you’re nervous.
You don’t like to draw
things you can’t foresee.
But I hope you’ll see how a chalk in
hand means you are
powerful.
I want you to believe you can
navigate the coming rivers.
Even if I cannot know how they will
flow or where we will
drift or what moves beneath.
How I long for and dread the
coming years.
Of knowing all that you will come to think.
Written in October 2020 by Sarah Dzida
Author’s Note: In 2020, I took a poetry workshop with Emily Hunt who inspired us to write poems after Simone White. The poem I’m mimicking is “Dog Poem,” which you can listen to here.
I wrote a BOOK about poetry, friendships and Japan! You can read an excerpt here. You can buy it here.