trying to finish another chapter

of the book she’s writing

about one of the dying languages.

And Lizard says,

“I wish I lived at your house,”

which she never says

when my mother is here.

But I Still Love When My Mom Comes Home Again

My dad and I go to the airport and wait

where the international arrivals come in,

and she doesn’t come, and she doesn’t come,

and suddenly there she is, looking like a stranger,

but also exactly like my mom.

Her face, crinkled and worn

from a super-long flight,

lights up like the twinkle lights

my dad keeps on the backyard deck all year.

She hugs me so tight

while my father hugs her.

“I missed you!

God, how I missed you!”

she says over and over again,

and I love her right then

more than anyone else in the world,

even my father,

even Lizard,

and I wish I could

keep her twinkle lights sparkling

every single day.

But I can’t.

Lizard’s Superpower

Lizard always knows everything first.

Maybe it’s because she has two older sisters,

or her father really is a spy and tells her things

he learns from spying. She was the first to know

Aiden A. had lice and Eloise’s parents were

getting divorced. She knew about the divorce

even before Eloise did. She knew Tad would

be elected class president even though everyone

said they had voted for Singh and Rok. Even

things about the world, she knows them first.

She’s the one who told me, way back in third grade,

that the polar ice caps are melting and whole

countries will be covered with water someday.

She told me most eggs come from chickens who live

squished together in tiny cages that make the chickens

so frantic that the farmers have to cut off their beaks

so they won’t peck each other to death.

Lizard’s favorite things to know first are bad things.

Sometimes I think she loves knowing bad things first

just so she can be the one to roll her eyes

at everyone else—especially me—and say,

“I thought everybody knew that.”

I think a little part of her also likes how sad

I feel when the things I thought were true

turn out

not to be.

The One Time I Know Something First

Today, Monday,

when we’re at Lizard’s house after school,

Lizard tells me that a third of all animal species

might go extinct because of global climate change.

I say, “Did you know that thousands

of languages are going extinct, too?”

I expect her to say, “Everybody knows that.”

But instead she says, “Languages can’t go extinct.”

I say, “Yes, they can.” And I tell her about my mom

and the dying languages she writes books about.

“I thought your mom was an anthropologist,” she says,

making it sound like she knows more about my mom than I do.