Saturday

I wheel the weekly route through the produce section’s
artificial year-round bounty, up and down the aisles

as the cart slowly fills, baby slung across my chest.
In the checkout I nuzzle his velvet head and breathe

the smell of him, clean sand and salt. The heat of him,
sun-warm under my cheek. The moment ripens

until my throat aches with it, even here in the supermarket,
waiting to pay, waiting to go home, to where my husband

cuts decking boards as our four year old plays in the late sun.
The saw whines and falls silent, whines and falls silent,

segmenting the afternoon. In between there’s the dull clatter
of wood on wood and the braided sound of conversation,

my son’s high voice lilting over his father’s lower responses.
I set the bags on the kitchen floor and nurse the baby,

then brace him on my hip to peel potatoes.
Steam blurs the darkening windows. Nights are not deep

here in the suburbs. Their black no more than gray,
and only a paltry handful of stars. Still, after supper

I bathe the baby and take him in his fuzzy sleep sack out to see
the moon’s sliver, the few stars glinting through.

He reaches for them, solemn in the shifting air and light.
And again I can feel the moment grow to its true size,

or I think I can. This moment and the next.
What will stay? When all that is passing

has passed. I thought I would remember
everything, J. told me. Meanwhile the hickories

out the kitchen window let go their gold behind my back
and I never turned to see. Meanwhile the baby

cannot sleep unless I stand and rock him, repeating
a little square of step and sway in his darkened room.

When I’m out of songs I watch the clock and count
time passing. Two minutes. Three. Each day he’s heavier

though I cannot feel it, until now he’s almost more
than I can bear. Even away from him, at work, I’m bruised

by tenderness. Glint of his eyes in darkness.
Two more minutes. Three. Stoop for the pacifier

off the floor. Three more. Four. Little baby boy
come to lodge with us, good night. Keeping the weight

of my hand on him, hunched over the crib.
Two more minutes. Three more. Four. I hold

the latch to close his door without a sound and slip down
to the bright quiet where my husband reads in lamplight,

smelling of sawdust, our older boy long since put to bed,
the counters wiped, still-warm dishes put away.

I drift free of the day on the couch, half-sleeping,
half-listening for the stirring of the baby who up the stairs

is too far to hear. Instead, there’s the sound of a helicopter beating
overhead, on its way to some aftermath. And something

I cannot comprehend. A quiet voice here in this room.
Unintelligible syllable out of the silence. So soft

it’s almost in my own mind. Pausing. Repeating. Insistent.
The small word each page whispers as it turns.

Emily Tuszynska‘s poetry can be found in many journals, recently including Poetry Northwest, Salamander, The Southern Review, and Water-Stone Review. She lives in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.