Footfall

You can still feel my heart
if you scratch it,
I heard you say on our walk
from our drive to the bus.

I didn’t want to ask
what this meant to you.
I didn’t want to break the world
you drew into daylight
from last night’s dream.

I thought instead
of a fingernail in the sand
drawing concentric circles.
I thought of seagulls,
their feet in the sand,
beaks in the wind, thought
how they look so human,
these feathered bodies meditating
at dawn, unmoving in a passing shadow
or a closing step.

I thought of big bullfrogs
by our favorite pond, soft bodies
barely moving beneath their beating hearts.
They can’t see us through the trees.
It’s the vibrations from our footfall
send them flying toward the sky
as if from nowhere
they’d sprouted wings.

50 East, Ohio

You’re the white line
against gray pavement worn
through in places, worn
as thin as my father’s college sweatshirt
I still wear sometimes, carefully
so as not to pull the threads.

There’s a turkey vulture hanging
a shadow on your skin
and if I didn’t have both hands
on the wheel, its arc
would have lulled me to sleep.

I want to believe
it’s a redtail hawk or an eagle,
the way this shadow catches the wind
along the length of its wings.
This far away from us the wrinkles
on its head and neck disappear
in the bright blue October day.

I saw one standing once
along the side of the road hovering
over a patch of grass, hovering
a vampire in the day.
I stared at it.
It stared at me.

As tall as my five-year-old
I never pictured it this way.
In the sky, the wind turns these birds
into something else, drops them
on a passing current,

and from this place
where the river bends the road
the light tells me

it’s nothing,
it’s a falling leaf.

Still

It's been 9 years, still
I have the urge
to pick up the phone
and call. It comes swiftly
like a wave of nausea
before dispersing into particles
of air.

When I imagine
what it would sound like
to hear your voice
it’s like I’ve accidentally
walked into a stranger
on the street.
I am so terribly sorry.
I didn’t see you.
I didn’t see you standing there.

I imagine
it’s like the sleep paralysis
I had once when I dreamed
my daughter stood
on the bar of her crib
just about to jump.
I watched it happening, thought
this must be real, still
I could not scream.
I tried to rock my body, my arms
back and forth, back
and forth.
There was nothing.
I was block and ice.

Too many things
are converging now.
For example: I watched
my daughter expertly
use a pair of scissors.
She’s five and capable.
This surprises me still
and I wanted you to know.

I’ve been told
this gets better with time.
In the beginning
I compared it
to fancy French cheeses, aging
wines with delicate names
and delicate pours.

The years sharpen.
Each muscle grows stronger
more sinewy and lean
these hills and slopes
in my daughter’s legs.

My husband knows
how to read the corners
of my mouth
when I watch her
push one foot off the drive,
the other planted firmly
on the scooter.
He tells me:
You have a lot of grief in you.

Why speak.
My face tells my story.

Yoga opens my morning almost every day. When I roll out my mat and hear the sounds of the house waking up with me, I like knowing that I have created this space for myself to breathe, to meditate, and to practice. Some mornings my daughter walks downstairs before I've finished and she sits next to me with her stuffed animals, occasionally moving her small body into down dog or child's pose. I believe this committed time on the mat, alone or with my daughter, has influenced my writing. I hear the little things in my world more clearly; I see more sharply; and the imaginative worlds I want to spin on paper become more real to the touch.

Yasmin Mariam Kloth writes creative nonfiction and poetry. Her writing, often inspired by her five-year-old daughter's words and views of the world, scratches at love, loss, place and space. Her work has appeared in Gravel, West Texas Literary Review, JuxtaProse, O:JA&L, the Rockvale Review, and others. Yasmin lives in Cincinnati, OH, with her husband and young daughter.

More on Yasmin Kloth’s work can be found on our Links page.