Christina Paradis

Loss

It was never the birthdays
or the first-days-back-to-school
or even the New Years or the firsts-of-the-months
that marked the passing of time for me.
My time didn't move in neat, delineated jumps
like the second hand of a watch.
Instead, it was the same imperceptible force
that stealthily tugged my hair from its
shoulder-length swing
to uneven straggles creeping down my back.

So I never expected it to age us at a steady pace.

And I hoarded the rare moments
when I could step outside of it.
When, even though I could still feel the wind
whipping my hair across my face,
and my ears still rang
from the loud, cheap car speakers,
I felt like I had stepped off the planet to watch it spin.
Then the realization would come,
that I am the creator of my own history.
And it lent the moment a kind of permanence,
like the pictures we labeled in indelible ink
while you could still remember who the faces belonged to.

Despite all this, your gift startled me.
Oh, I know it was just a thought
that fell to the earth like a lacy bit of ash
as you burned through the atmosphere away from us.
But I was touched that it had made its way
through the turbulent layer of emotion covering this world,
that somehow, it found me.
And I was overwhelmed that death could compress time so much,
that at once you could think of me as an infant,
a child, and a grown daughter.
And your love, which came to me
in many different tones over the years,
has suddenly become a single, resounding chord.

Christina Paradis writes: I'm currently living in a beautiful old Edwardian in San Francisco, which is a wonderful city. I have a B.A. in English from Penn State, and took several workshops at the Poetry Society in Gramercy Park, NYC. A poem of mine was recently published in Recursive Angel. On my coffee table are copies of DoubleTake, Mother Jones, and The New Republic.