She was right about this place, the unforgiving winter months sullen, sunless, bitter, but then spring a dream God has and lets us slumber in until October. What’s lonelier is our non-Dutchness and, Boom Bap, she’d say, it does make a difference: any porch light inviting scholars, dap, moths, those of us outside their huge, jolly, white families. June, after her death, I walk my dogs, my strollered son, through the park between our house and hers, where sometimes I see the preemie and spouse who live without her dark shoulders in a sundress, Phyllis Wheatley and classic rap popping in her mouth. Today, instead, I see an arm at the window waving high and wide at me, and I know so few here, none but her family in the lofts across the way, that for a frozen second I think, It’s Jenn, my heart a squirrel between these trees, leaping, stuttering with joy, & though it cannot possibly be—wrong floor, wrong skin—just like that, my hand is ready, raised to wave. The arm lifts again its small rag, back & forth, wiping the window clean.
