In the city my mother grew up in, there is a house with a staircase, older than the last name we both share. the handrail is worn smooth and its paint has been chipped long before the world had a concept of photographs. The stairs wind tightly around a pillar, so uneven from all the shoes that have tred it that my mother would sit me on her hip to carry me, when I was still small enough to fit all of myself and trust into the hollow of her arms.
- this is not a poem about mothers.
Once, a thousand years ago, this staircase was built. A thousand feet have tred it. A thousand hands have guided it. A thousand rains have swallowed it up. I lean against the cold stone, with my head thrown back and my heartbeat in my ears, and somewhere within me, there is the echo of a woman, her skirts hiked up to her calves. perhaps the memory of a man with a limp, a child who ran up into the tower and back again until it lost its breath. Before a camera set off its first flash, this stone etched these memories into itself, worn away little by little, until it bent under human weight.
Outside, mounted on a fountain, stands a horse. It has long since lost its rider, only the stirrups remain. Its nose is shiny where a thousand hands have rubbed away the paint. The metal is cool against my palms.
I walk through the city my mother grew up in. If I tilt my head right, I can see all that it once was in its stone.
- tilt your head back. This summer night is as it once was. Can you find the north star in its glow?
