Days you brought pomegranates to our fourth grade class
I made the pilgrimage from my desk to yours
to gather a fistful of jewels
carry them in a napkin back to my desk
suck the blood red fruit from each seed
as carefully as I added the numbers before me.

I did not know pomegranates have as many
     seeds as good deeds we do in one year.
I did not know Hades fed them to Persephone
     to lure her back to the Underworld,
     that Demeter’s sorrow was our winter.
I knew this was your offering
     seeds of velvet
     small comets across our tongues
     lighting the corners of our mouths.

                                                      for Rena

I look at the back of my hands, dried
riverbeds, wonder what you saw in yours
as you labored twenty years in our home, childless
and seven states away from your husband.

Afternoons I'd return from school, watch you
watching soap operas and ironing creases
into and out of anything, steam yawning
hanging in the air against our skin like pillows.

Part of what I knew those years:
your fried chicken would grace our table
once every week, the color of a dress
could match ocean, grass, or sky, that on you
safety pins were medals where buttons used to be.

Did you know I was like a bird nesting in your thick
black branches, hoping even when a moon
was new, I could find the way home to you?

evening after blue evening
we gathered scraps of screen and rubber bands,
lined clear jars washed clean of peanut butter
with leaves and blades of grass
moved through air thick as water
our hands cupped as if in prayer
to lure fireflies, beacons of the summer night,
into containers disguised as home.