the ugly earring

(my dream seat. city light’s poetry room, 2006) 

The tattered blue kimono hangs lifeless on the back of the bedroom door.  A blank notebook sits untouched on the dressing table while petite amore sleeps with one leg under the cover and the other atop the white down. Just like her ami. 

Weeks after amore’s birth, ami read the first chapter of Remembrance of Things Past occasionally reciting passages aloud while amore fell asleep at the breast. Later, she started reading from the book of Hans Christian Andersen and the tale of the little mermaid. But instead of finishing the story, she left the ending for her daughter to uncover on her own.

A spring rain fell on the window shield as ami drove home from the office. These are the few minutes she has to herself.  

She recalls two past lovers, tragedy and despair, who dictated her journals and her moods. She was an amateur minx back then with a white cat sleeping at the foot of the bed. Her poems were brooding, but she wrote often. Her sleepless nights were accompanied by Mishima, Beauvoir and Sontag.  In those days, she believed with all her longing and admiration that she too would be a writer.

But, her journals are not timeless and do not reflect who she is today. In fact, they are almost too ridiculous to read.  

“What a poseur, you were!” she says to the reflection in the rearview mirror.

Ami now sleeps curled up to a beautiful little girl. The hardbound books by the bedside tell the tale of a mole that gets lost in the snow or a farmer who doesn’t want to share his strawberries. The vintage dresses she once wore hang in the back of the closet and serve as reminders of that old flirtation.

She knows she will never wear them again.

She thinks of a novel she sketched before amore was born. It remains untouched, piled under bill receipts and junk mail. There are vignettes that also linger, ones that she’d like to complete before amore’s first birthday.  But, these are not part of her reality. Her daily routine. Instead, her days pass by in the office where she misses climactic moments in amore’s development and her evenings are spent making up for time lost.

She was confident that she’d return to her writing soon enough. And when the longing surfaced it shimmered like a Japanese beetle on a spring morning and she slipped into her old skin temporarily. But since then, she has returned only once, late one evening when amore was asleep.  She sat at the kitchen table scrapping passages and pages from her novel and just as she began, with pen in hand, amore called her mother back to sleep.

She would ask her lover for advice on how to make time to write.

But, she knows what he will say, “you must be disciplined, consistent, and you should sleep less.”

He is right.  Mishima wrote religiously every night.

But she is not ready for those words.

She turns to Virginia Woolf for some guidance. But even Woolf does not offer the advice she seeks. How can one close the door to a room of her own when amore is sitting happily on the kitchen floor with a basil leaf hanging from her lips?

The answer. She already knows.

She must have faith.

She reminds herself of the secret agenda.

“…Take notes and remember everything.”

And maybe with a little help of the maidenhair tree, her memory will keep fresh the sting of a friend’s betrayal, the beauty underneath amore’s long eyelashes, the tenderness of his words as he sings his newest composition, and the brightness of every desert sunset that passes through the living room window and into their downtown home.