two-handed to some

wandering grown-up.

When one sells, we call it

going home.

We make a clay box the size of a big fist,

and trolls crawl all over it.

We put money in the box

every time

a troll goes home.

Sunday Drive

By the next Sunday,

my father visits,

and he puts us

in the back of the Sunbird.

The wind is blowing my head off.

My father drives with the top down.

Always.

He wears Porsche sunglasses

and a long coat

with a million pockets.

He was made for this.

But my insides are a step behind

each twist and turn.

He traces the lines

of the winding roads

and me and Pick hang on

until it’s over.

My father comes on Sundays, sometimes.

Doesn’t stay long.

A Talk in the Car

Mom loves to take drives too,

in an old yellow four-door truck

she bought to haul her creations.

We learn how to handle

the winding roads.

I listen to my mother talk

about a million ideas

she has for the nursery.

I think she thinks I’m an adult.

I learn to listen.

Somewhere

between Muir Woods

and Stinson,

where the road winds

and is full of disaster,

Pick asleep in the back,

she starts to talk about my father.

When I met him, you know, he was so handsome.

And then some details about suits

and hairstyles, Hawaii, crashing a dune buggy,

riding horses.

Today, just before the Bolinas Lagoon

spills blue from behind the mountain,

as I am lost in my own thoughts,

she says,

He was incredible at lovemaking.

Her accent suddenly flares,

almost unrecognizable,

thrown back into a Bronx summer.

I don’t look. I just stare at the window.

I wonder what would happen

if I opened the door and rolled

out of the car?

What about you?

Do you ever, you know?

It feels like she read a book

or watched a TV show

that told her to “talk to your kid.”

I say nothing, look toward the Pacific.

I grip my seat belt.

I want to tell her what I’m going through,

that the changes in my body terrify me,

that I’m seeing myself in the mirror

and I feel so much weight,

that I’m filled up,

sometimes with sadness,

sometimes with hate.

I want to tell her that I lie all the time

so people will like me.

I lie to myself about why I’m this way.

I want to tell her that everything is changing.

I want to tell her that I don’t understand

anything I’m going through,

and that my mind has a mind of its own.

We roll straight into town,

turn left into the nursery,

the quiet crackling of gravel

beneath slow-moving rubber tires,

and she waits, looking at me.

If I could, I would just let her see

inside my mind because I don’t know

how to tell her,