ode on this one and only day

walking

The world is a jewel box, and I am a jewel within it. I am an undercover fairytale princess, and everything glows to my eyes. The grass is preternaturally green, the trees sparkle, and I can surely see vines stretching toward the sun before my eyes. The birds have caught on -- they arrange their songs like jazz musicians, with syncopated tenor beats, soprano be-bop, accented trills. I watch the tulips open their petals wide to take it all in. I am alive with wet braided hair, an empty canvas bag waiting for books, hoping in the glow.

library

Stillness reigns; quiet overwhelms me. This is how a library ought to be, I suppose, but who knew it was possible? Campus--even traffic around campus--is notably subdued. Typically-packed rows of tables boast one or two lone readers, slouched, with green-strawed cups of iced coffee. The stacks are hushed and dusty, and the front-desk workers have time to chat, to look over my titles, to smile into my eyes. I see more friends than usual--the statistics, I suppose, are skewed in favor of meeting like-minded folk in the post-finals stillness. I walk home with the weight of my seven volumes reminding my shoulder that I am alive.

laundry

I soak and wash winter sweaters, preparing them for a summer tidy in their bottom drawer. I wash the party dress I wore to my cousin's bridal shower over the weekend, hanging it to dry on the shower rod and admiring it every time I pass by. I wash my corduroy blazer and find earplugs in the pocket, a gift from my father at a concert months ago (my baby brother's concert). I eye my pile of mending and promise myself to do it soon. My hands smell like laundry soap for the rest of the afternoon.

bread

Measuring amber honey into a measuring cup, I contemplate this change: once upon a time Josh held a job that meant weekly free bread, and my own baking stilled. Now we've moved on from that job, and our freezer stock of loaves is running low. So today I bake. I knead under the watch of a kitchen timer, dig the heels of my hands into whole-wheatey dough to the rhythm of Joni Mitchell on the radio. Give-us-this-day-our-daily means something else when you have dough in your hands. I mull over this a while. The dough rises under a tea towel, with no one watching it, and how it does this I have no idea.

reading

Now I will take up my next task, teach my washed palms to hold worn book-cloth-covered tomes, take my blue-ink notes and fall into the sixteenth century. Perhaps these women writers baked bread and washed laundry; perhaps someone else did these tasks for them (in certain times and certain places, a single pair of hands never held book, pen, dough, and soaking linen). Perhaps they knew the scent of finally-spring, the shine of morning on waking grass, the dandelion laughter that throws the sun back up to itself, calling, "Here you are! Here you are!" Perhaps they knew a day that was, in all its dailyness, a one-and-only day.