Kate Sweeney Largo (Sidney Wade)
My Daughter Talks to Water My daughter talks to water, sings to the bubbles in the bathtub, waves her tiny starfish hand to the intercoastal as we drive away from the beach. Asks it, Can you hear me say ‘goodbye’? My daughter talks to fish and they come, pinfish and sharks, circling the pier as she stands at the edge. I grip her wrist like a shackle and she struggles against it like someone committed to something against their will. She was conceived in Amsterdam, where canals slide beneath cyclists and flowers potted on bridges. The next morning her father and I stood over the Bloemgracht and watched a crane on a barge pull twisted spokes and lawn chairs from the brown water. My daughter talks to the moon, a scrap of wet paper hanging over the bay. She tells me it is pink because that is the only color she knows and I start to believe it because she says it with more certainty than anyone else, about anything else in the whole world. My daughter talks to water and my son tries to correct her, tells her Water can’t talk. But she and I know the difference between the things that chatter and the things that speak, the difference between the yank of an undertow and the gritty sooth of your own tide. |
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