168

i
my life: marked by milestones
of meals, snapshots of snacks
shared over tables.
our house
was            is            always will be               the family home.  

I can’t imagine a time
when it won’t be
but that time will come

I wonder how many memories these walls
can hold. how many
birthdays, births, deaths, marriages, holidays, graduations
have been celebrated amongst
yellow wallpaper and floral couches.

we send everyone home with a plate

            (or two)
        (or three) 

and still have two fridges stuffed with left
overs. my mother spends hours in the kitchen
with my aunt. they feed us                           all.

 we break bread; we tell stories. over cioppino,
my uncle laughs and shares an anecdote

(or two)
(or three)

about the east coast, about my grandparents,
about the time my cousins returned
home from camp to discover an empty
house, because he and auntie carole moved
while they were gone. we talk about her,
about aunt carole and aunt carmella
and noni and everyone who isn’t with us
            anymore.
we lost people, but they live in every story,
in every cheesecake my mother bakes.

ii
in the house I grew
up in, my mother
            grew a garden; two barrels
            of herbs in the backyard—basil, parsley, over
flowing mint crowding the rest.                                                                                                       

  I remember
planting beans one year,
but they didn’t make it.

 my mother has the green thumb
in the family—she only passed it to
my brother.

my grandpa has a garden, too, filled
with tomatoes and peppers and herbs and
in the front yard—apricots and accidental
pomelos. in the backyard is a menagerie
            of fruits; apple trees lining the
            pool, plums and peaches hugging
            the concrete fence on the corner
            of branham and snell, one large
            and magnificent fig tree that holds
our tire swings and covers the yard in sticky sweet seeds.
the yard is as full of life as the home that
housed nine people at once.           three generations. 

iii
often I wonder if I can carry on
this legacy, if I will be home for
my family
                                                 for my family’s
family
—I cannot grow things like my
grandpa or cook like my mother. I burn
batches of cookies and undercook
squash. but practice makes perfect.
my mother taught me to make a recipe
my own,
to mix part of myself into it.

so I am practicing—