The Street You Can't Uncross
/Meghan McClure
The last time you held my hand
to cross the road, I knew
you would never hold it again,
I’d have to go it alone.
You were no longer at risk
so I clenched my fingers into my own palm.
You still rest your head on my chest
oh, you never fall asleep there now,
you explain to me the heart,
what the heart does without our asking.
I ask if you can hear mine pause
Mama, the heart doesn’t stop until you die.
But I know better,
mine has stopped a thousand times a day,
since the first time I held your hand
to cross a busy street—
like a bad joke about a chicken and
how dumbly we all cross streets for
want of more, more, more—
lack of knowing what’s on the other side
how little we know of what we want
and how quickly it could all be taken.
I tighten my fist,
I can feel my own pulse.
I settle for this,
my own stupid heart beating,
you next to me in the crosswalk,
your chatter above the rush of the city,
skipping ahead with such joy,
it would be a crime to tell you how the joke ends.
Author’s Commentary: I wrote this poem after an evening of running errands in our city with my oldest daughter and realizing we didn't hold hands once as we crossed busy streets and waited in lines as we have for years, first out of necessity, then out of habit and comfort. It was a first leaving as she grows up and one of the first things I won't be honest with her about. I don't want to tell her how sad it makes me because it also brings me joy as her orbit swings further out from me and she feels the freedom of taking streets alone. That's the joke of parenting, the things that break your heart are also the things that bring it joy.
Meghan McClure is author of the chapbook Portrait of a Body in Wreckages (Newfound Press, 2017) and co-author of A Single Throat Opens (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Tupelo Quarterly, American Literary Review, Pithead Chapel, American Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in California.
