Category: emptiness

I hold
a handful of pomegranate seeds—
I think of you
 all I know and do not know--

A bushel of grapefruits
arrive at the front door.
The next day, a bushel of oranges 
followed by a bushel of pomegranates,
like tribute foretelling the arrival 
of some dignitary or prince.
Every summer, the bushels 
foreshadowed your visits--
The grapefruits and oranges
for my mother,
who loved all citrus,
a luxury she didn’t have
growing up in West Virginia.
The pomegranates for me--
You knew I loved them.
Why did the bushels and the visits stop
after the summer I turned six?

These seeds I hold,
ready to throw into today’s salad,
are too few—

I remember you—
showing me how to open a pomegranate;
teaching me to count in Greek;
moving a stepstool to the counter
so I could climb and see 
how to make Greek yogurt from scratch,
when you saw my nose wrinkle at the smell,
telling me, “You will like it because you Greek,”
your accent as thick and heavy as the clabbered milk 
in the yogurt glasses.

The last summer you came to visit—
A train ride to Florida 
to stay the whole summer
with you and Aunt Mae.  
I wanted the top bunk in the train car.		
You tucked me into the lower one saying,
“You fall here. No hurt. You fall from up there, you hurt,”
before hefting yourself into the top bunk. 
You said you’d teach me to swim.
“Everybody in Greece swim.  I teach you. You learn easy
because—” you paused, waiting-- 
for my six-year-old excitement to finish, “I’m Greek!”
You tousled my hair then loaded our things in the car.

Everything to be tried, to be learned, to be shown
required our liturgical call and response:
you would start, “You will like because—"
and I would finish, “I’m Greek.”

Teaching me to swim didn’t work out too well—
You told me to move my arms and legs fast,
then threw me into the ocean.
Each time I flailed and sank.
Each time you pulled me up,
“You okay. You learn.”
The third or fourth throw,
You pulled me up
And said, “Enough today.
But you learn because—”
And despite my fearful sobbing,
I finished, “I’m Greek,”
as I wrapped my arms around your neck.
We did not have time.
I never learned.

Sirens, red lights,
dark outside,
Aunt Mae crying.
The hospital cold, noisy.
Mae on the phone.
Mommy coming on the train.

You lived.
Came home.
Peeled me a pomegranate.

Mom and I left on the train.
The last time I saw you, Uncle Pete,
though you did not die until three months
after my high school graduation,
an obituary found on the internet tells me so.
But the bushels, the visits, the phone calls 
stopped the summer I turned six.
I never knew why.
I will never know now.


Fifty-nine years after that summer with you,
I stand holding a handful of pomegranate seeds,
shining their ruby glow.
Decades since last I split open a pomegranate.
Too easy to buy in plastic tubs now.
I need to finish this salad.

But I am stilled in the moment—
The truth I now know—
sleuthing through scraps of internet information
after a DNA test--
What neither of us may have known that one summer,
We were/ are father and daughter.

And these seeds I hold---
They are not enough.