The Upstairs Notebook

We missed the elephants feeding

on fruit in the stadium parking lot

because it was too difficult to leave

the house today. Most days are

like this now. The circus is in town,

and I am transferring singular objects—

my breast pump, my My-Breast-Friend

inflatable nursing pillow, my hands-free

pumping bra, my son—from one floor

of our rented row house to another.

This is a many-step process.

This takes longer than orthodontia,

some honeymoons, or a story told

by a kindergartener. The weeping

cherry trees are shedding wet blossoms

turned up one morning with a black

trash bag taped over the passenger-side

window and my hormones made me cry.

This is the upstairs notebook.

I have a downstairs one too,

about the neighbor who comes home

from work at five and listens, loud,

to the Bar-Kays’ “Holy Ghost”

in his alley-propped lawn chair.

In my downstairs notebook I also try

to write about the way it feels to walk

with my son strapped to my body,

his wet mouth suctioned to the space

between my breasts. My C-section slash

is still partially numb, and it’s raining.

My breast infection is on the mend.

Sometimes my son is sleeping, and today

he sleeps through the idea of elephants milling

a few blocks up, past Dee Dee’s Kutz &

Hook-Upz, past the drunks peeing

against the wall of the Mandarin Carry-Out.

In Southeast DC, a few blocks from us,

there are enormous elephants eating fruit

in the rain, and one day I will tell him

how we almost went to see them.