The girl with the red stroller

Ana Reisens

I.

I cannot hold the spring.

II.

Spring has slipped on its floral coat and crabapple petals line the gravel. A family passes. The man carries his sweater over his shoulders. The woman wears white gloves. Behind them, a girl pushes a stroller. It’s large and red and meant for more than the plastic doll nestled inside, pale eyelids bobbing. Every few steps the girl stops to arrange its invisible needs – a blanket, a whimper, the shade. I watch the trees sway as the man and woman pass and the girl pushes the red stroller and I don’t know why, suddenly, the petals feel so heavy.

III.

The petals are heavy beneath the stroller
as the girl pushes forward,

draped in her make-believe.
We, too, wear costumes.

The man steps with heavy shoes.
Father, father, they crunch.

The woman walks suspended by a silver thread –
one glace forward, another back. Mother.

The girl walks alone but somehow
is still held against her mother’s breast.

Meanwhile the spring. Meanwhile the finches
and the petals and the breeze.

The earth knows the secret to any costume
is to never let it grow too heavy.

IV.

The stroller becomes too heavy for the girl and the family stops beside a painted bench. A wren thrills its protest and the mother turns to say something to the girl.

V.

My mother once said that the earth was glass
and that I must never buy myself flowers.
She said that women are meant to be hungry 
and that’s why hens can’t fly.

My mother once said that breasts were nests                                   
and that finches wouldn’t land in willows.
She said I must carry my memories in a handbag
and paint my lips red every day.

My mother once said
she had forgotten
how to fly

and I believed her.

VI.

I believe the girl could have chosen another costume.
What about a princess, or sorceress, or unicorn?
Or how about a gardener, or artist, or teacher?
That’s not to mention astronaut. Olympian.
Superhero. (We can be these now, too.

Isn’t there time enough for diapers
and handbags? Oh, what the little girl
might have been without the stroller.

VII.

Without the stroller / the girl might have:

muddied her skirt in the puddles / chased after aphids /
dug tunnels beneath the moss / painted her name
in bark / sipped tea with the daffodils / visited
the finches’ village / rubbed honey on her skin /
translated the slick language of the wren / grown
feathers / become hooves / run / leapt /danced / been
a petal / a giggle / a willow/ anything
but a mother.

VIII.

A petal is anything but a mother.
It is a sister, perhaps, or

a mistress – a history
of another woman’s bliss.

It is a feather,
a priestess,

the melody we would sing
if only we remembered

IX.

I remember the day my grandmother explained that music was memory and the piano bench was heavy because we were not meant to rise. She said that melody was in the counting. One, two, three, four. Repeat. I learned from the same books she used to teach my mother and she gave me a red sticker when I memorized a new song. My grandmother explained that melody was a hen and there was no use imagining it could be any different. She said that everything must be repeated, that this is all we have been given.

The girl with the red stroller will continue to publish daily until May 2nd

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