My great grandmother Mary Somers was born in 1852 in County Limerick, Ireland. She immigrated to New Britain, Connecticut with her family when she was nine years old. She went to school until she was eleven and then went to work. At age 16, she had a fight with her mother, took her life savings and went down to the train station where she placed half of it on the counter and bought a one-way ticket for as far as the money would take her. The conductor told her to get off in Cleveland. She married O’Brien The Mover, had ten children and became the vet for the horses that did all the moving. What if the money had gotten her to Chicago?

Dumb luck, pure chance, disasters, miracles. Solid turns to liquid, liquid turns to gas. In a leap of faith, solid turns to gas.

Mad King Sweeney was an Irish king who ruled the roost in Medieval Ireland. A renegade, prone to losing his temper, impulsive and lawless, he would fly off the handle at the drop of a hat. He had a fight with Ronan Finn, the cleric. He threw Ronan’s hymnal into the lake. Oh, an otter fished it out, but Ronan cursed Sweeney, turned him into a bird, and banished him to roam the rocky crags of Northern Ireland. Sweeney lost his home, his wife, his friends and was forced into a life of bitter self-examination. He was set adrift from all known places. Isolated in his tree-top dwelling, he became an observer, a philosopher.

In search of wholeness, we take journeys we might not want to take.

Everything is in constant flux. Everyone is moving from one state to another, from liquid to solid to gas, from Ohio to São Miguel, from Lampedusa to Akron. The swallows and butterflies gather in clouds of frenzy for their trek South. This one is getting married, that one is leaving a group of childhood friends. Life is ebb and flow. We strike it rich! We lose what we thought was a sure thing.

We make one small decision that changes everything – to buy a house by the sea, to enter the convent, to take that teaching job in Korea.

Or perhaps, even if we do none of this, we are nevertheless changed by simply walking through life. And like a balloon, which never returns to its original state once inflated, we never return to those roads not taken.

Elaine is 89. She lives in the same assisted living place as my aunt. Many of the people are from the area. She is not. Her daughter lives in town. That is why she is here. She is suffering.

“I’m not complaining,” she says. “I’ve had a very good life.”

She raised her family in Rochester, NY. Her husband was a newspaper man, then went into advertising. They did well. Elaine has an elegance and kindness about her. But she is afraid now of death, of the tumor growing in her brain. She wonders aloud if she truly appreciated her former life.

We can’t fully understand our lives as we are living them. The meaning appears later. An old Irish saying goes, Is maith an scéalaí an aimsir. Time is the great storyteller.

The Goths headed South, the Visigoths headed East, the Hondurans are headed North, the Conestoga wagons headed West.

For every action there is always an opposite and equal reaction.

On the Day of the Absent Ipalans, in a small town in Guatemala, townsfolk celebrate those who strike out for a better life. Jennifer Sagastume, who lives with her house-cleaner mother in Maryland, came back a few years ago to be crowned “Queen of the Absent Ipalans.” She is proof of a better life in a promised land. But she also speaks to another dream: the possibility of return and perhaps the possibility of never having to leave.

Objects at rest will stay at rest and objects in motion will stay in motion.

The world is made up of leavers and stayers. Leavers set out for adventure, for safety, for growth, fame, fortune, freedom. Stayers stay for stability, for fear, for family, friends. Rilke knew them both, the one who ‘stands up during supper and walks outdoors and keeps on walking’ and another who ‘remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses’.

Perhaps we all end up a bit wistful for what might have been.

real, not some wavering digital presence
smiling and calling out to us “How are you?”
Our voices rising above the traffic noise
“We love you!! Love you!!! Keep getting better!!!”

Now we are weaving through the airport maze.
Donna swings my suitcase to the pavement,
our final smiles hidden behind our masks—
a new motif to our pattern of goodbye—

I can feel the fabric of my life stretching.
Just this past week it lay over me, a familiar blanket
like the one in my sister’s guest room
formed by the weft and warp of childhood.

On the plane, a tension
pulling me across continent and ocean,
a forward momentum so strong
I fear I will be torn in two,

Chicago’s colors bleeding and blending into Hawaii’s oceans
blue with wrinkles of sunlight, warm hues
reminding me of my husband’s hand in mine,
my daughter a cautious soft pastel, waiting,

nothing to do but pen shuttling
across the page, memories unspooling,
entwining old and new, here and there.
Feeling the currents, over and under each line

perpendicular directions of my life, crossing,
the cloth of me emerges, not quite whole
yet strengthened, I continue to write
until I land—

No Good Samaritan for this curbside wreck
heavy with broken ribs,
a rusted silver throat open, speechless—
10,000 intricate parts sinking into the cast iron belly.

Passing joggers hurry, quickened by the unheard music.
A parade of dogs lift their legs, saluting
the decay,
a whole year of jogging and dogs and COVID.

The piano is gone, one day, suddenly
leaving only sunlight and flattened grass
like an impression of music
waiting to be sung.

Tonight a super blood moon will rise
across East Asia, where journalists
have gone to further investigate
wet markets and leaking labs.
In the wake of unnatural disasters,
we read The New York Times online,
understanding nothing.
A chatbot pops up to teach us
how to change people’s minds,
but we decide this evening
it better perhaps to influence
socially only ourselves.

A bowl of apples upon the table.
A pile of books upon the night stand.
I am refueling in preparation
for the next emergency.
Church spires have been replaced
by mobile phone towers, and
we no longer appreciate
the strangeness of modern life.
The right has learned to love relativism.
The left has learned to love power.
What do we owe to those
less fortunate than ourselves?

When I was young, the stars blazed
like fire strung aloft in the vast
blue-black canopy of night.
Tonight these self-same stars to me
seem faded, less numerous. I am afraid
the time is coming soon when I look
aloft only to discover an empty sky,
altogether devoid of light.

They’re not like other parents, who read their papers or tablets in separate Easyboy chairs, far apart in dark rooms, barely speaking unless the roof falls or the cat dies. No. Our parents are into each other, attracting-repelling like magnets, depending on which way they’re turned. Always chirping at each other, two big parakeets in a small cage, they have no time for me and Brother. The parents have time and eyes only for each other, circling like Suma wrestlers, or dancers, depending on moods.

They forgot about their children. We grew hungry for food and for the larger world. Brother’s belly rumbled at the kitchen table while he played with blocks, then later, worked on counting aloud: “One plus one equals two. Two minus one equals… Mom.”

As big sister, I learned to cook, very young. Standing on a stool, cracking eggs, I learned when the hot oil would pop, when to duck. I made grilled cheese. I read novels while Little Brother worked on multiplication homework at the table.

The parents had already practiced division! How many times would Dad go all the way into Mom? Once. One whole Mom. Could you divide Dad by Mom? Yes, one time, again, the result was the same.

“How much is six times seven?” Brother asked.

“Be your own man!“ Father called out from inside Mother, a hollow voice inside a crypt.

I grew tall while they grew wide, trading off going into each other’s apertures, expanding sideways. They were more boa constrictor than human. The parents were busy bending, standing, rolling on the floor, one making gagging noises thigh high on the other’s leg, down the throat.

“Get a room!” I hollered. “Get out, if you can’t help. We’re trying to eat.” Wary of touching them, I rolled them out with a broom.

I wished they would act like adults. Soon, they rolled back into the kitchen, Mom hugging herself around Dad like a contortionist. She was a high waisted pair of stretchy pants pulled up on an old man, up to his armpits. They couldn’t get enough. They reminded me of drug addicts on the Internet, each one the other’s Higher Power. They swallowed one up, then spat that one out, giant cats retching hair balls.

By age 16, I took over all the groceries and dinners, taught Brother to do laundry. I paid the bills from Grandpa’s inheritance —Grandpa had disappeared into Grandma a decade ago. I rarely saw Mom and Dad separate, rarely saw two distinct people. When the government census form came to the house, I didn’t know how to fill it out, how to count people in our home.

Mom opened her mouth wide —to belch, to utter a syllable about Dad— and sometimes I saw Dad inside, a haunted human face in a dark cave, aquiline nose protruding from her throat like uvula. They were a real carnival act, Mom better than a sword swallower.

Dad opened her jaws from the inside, forcing his fingers crablike over teeth, holding her mouth open to speak. As if afraid his time were short. he barked brief advice: “Never mix business with family,” he said Saturday, while Brother and I folded laundry. Brother, smiling from parental attention, nodded, folding white tube socks into pairs. The jaws opened again, creaking on rusty hinge. “Girl,” Dad called. “If you let someone inside you, use a condom.”

I blinked, I tossed a bath towel over Mom-Dad’s head. “I’m good, Dad-Mom. I know about birth control. If I were going to let someone in, I’d make sure he pulled back out.”

Feeding on each other, the parents stopped eating food. Mom’s color changed. She was a stretched out container, a grey shell. It was a matter of days. One funeral should cover it.

Brother smelled the decay. Leaving home for the school bus, first he gripped me tightly in his arms. My body relaxed against his. Tempting, not to let go, but I pushed him off. “High Five!”

Brother smacked my hand with his.

“Now leave this house! Go!”

How would that work, exactly? I asked my boss. Figure it out, he said, practicing his golf swing in his mind, in my mind.

As Lay Off #1 left, I phoned Lay Off #3, while ushering in Lay Off #2, a former high school gymnast. (I expected she would land well.) By the time #3 arrived she’d heard from #1, and burst into my office, back from lunch wearing a wooly cap with flying ties, yelling, “So, are you planning to lay me off, too?” She thought she would be getting a promotion, or, at worst, extra work; thought she was safe with 25 years of seniority, as a former lab tech, but we’d checked. We were HR, after all. So, um, yeah.

I thought of my dad, union steward turned personnel tester, shuddering whenever he had to cross a picket line.

Alas, #3’s teenage daughter was dating the CEO’s son. So, guess who got fired next? (Not my boss.)

Not sure what happened to #1, but I ran into #2 and #3 at a networking event and we bonded like those videos of a mom dog nursing kittens. True to form, #2 had developed a drinking problem, but then tumbled into her new career as an employee assistance counselor, and #3 now worked in employee relations. Was it wrong to feel I helped deploy them to their respective rightful paths? No wonder I ended up as an outplacement counselor.

When they tore down the building last year, sheltering urban wildlife of various species tumbled from their sanctuary, exposed, dizzy with freedom.

Of course, nowadays, most of us work remote.

Before the injection, Vivian’s nurse warned she might experience fever, fatigue or rashes. But her body felt something else entirely. Head to toe, it fell into a deep cleansing experience. A flushing sensation that had nothing to do with feeling feverish. More like a celebration of well-being singing its way outward from her flesh, organs and blood vessels. “Whoosh, all gone! All clear! Perfectly healthy!”

Vivian’s pre-vaccinated body had never known such self-confidence. Memories of its past injuries, illnesses and risk factors were being vacuumed up at a cellular level. Every hour wasted on incompetent clinicians and their faulty diagnoses was sucked out of her memory. With no medical history, Vivian and her body were at peace with their future.

His ego betraying him yet again, Bill G. left a thank you note at the entrance to the medical memory void the chip had left in Vivian’s body. The note assured her her data, memories and medical history would be anonymized and aggregated with data from millions of other Moderna patients. In the event covid did trouble her again, Bill had left a tiny monitoring component to keep updating him on her status.

Vivian still grins when she imagines how surprised Bill must have been when she replied. Posing as a grateful citizen, all she had to do was fake an hour of covid anxiety. He clicked on the link she’d enclosed, and a back door to his top secret vaccine lab flew open.

Pfizer taught her these and other corporate espionage tricks when she agreed to serve as their double agent.

Synapses snapping like purple lightning
zapping mosquitoes on a muggy night,

She continued pouring coffee, taking orders,
making small talk, refunding change, and
calling everyone, “Hun.”

And when her shift was done, she fell into
a deep dreamless sleep.