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Show Go Love/236 daughter hauling gear into the makeshift house where a beach fire now burns before the open door Renee shakes out an Indian blanket from our backpack, drags it inside where I imagine her forming the four corners into the rough walls, making the place fit for us to fall down and rest Sun falls gleaming on the water for miles and miles. The air I breathe is chill and salty. Down in front of our driftwood home, Lara warms her hands, palms open to the beach fire flames All the things that will happen in her lifetime begin from here, the bonehouse her mother makes, stretching the blue tarp across the door's open mouth. Navahoes believe there's great good luck in blue doors, good medicine. This second the door folds upward. Renee steps out again and sees me see her. She smiles, then disappears into the shelter. The ocean seems blank, a slate, a breath about to happen In front of the lean-to, just beyond the flames, Lara tromps a crude heart, ten-feet tall, into the sand, turns and flashes a smile up over her shoulder. From where I stand, she looks like younger version of Mama, like my mother as a girl with the wind in her hair. In the last moment, just before the heart closes, she holds out both hands for balance. My daugher's feet lift and fall gently over the last three steps Much caution, the business of hearts. Across the gulf between us, her concentration is unmistakable. Four years old, she believes she knows. She flashes one last smile-and it's done A day will come when I go home and to open my mother's room. Through a floral blouse, I will breathe her and in the seams of her letters see the word again and again and again Love, the one buoy, what remains when the quiets andd the crude heart is tromped. One day soon, I'll lay Stepwell blocks around the grave, light sage on a medicine wheel and the smoke will whirl upward through the hickories. Blackberry bloom will fall down the the barbed wire fence and the cut turf will mend. Copperheads will taste the air with dark tongues |