To Keep What I Love
by Taije Silverman

I asked my mother, Will you come sit on my bed?
This was after I had walked home
in the middle of streets, afraid of the dark.
Everyone's suffering comes in moments
and then is forgotten. I gripped my mother's hand.
What is it? she asked. You don't want to know,
I promised. I do want to know, she said.
Everyone I love is going to die, I told her,
and she pulled me into her arms. There, it's done,
I thought, I've given up my secret. She didn't seem
to mind. Love freely, she said, live in your moment.
You love me right now. You love me in this moment.
My father walked in wearing his underwear.
Are you modeling Gabe? my mother asked,
and told him, We are dealing with death.
My cheeks were wet. He kissed me goodnight.
Leaving the room he said Remember,
we are going to die, and we're not going to like it,
but it's a good thing, because then we get to be reborn.
We never leave each other. There's just energy.
So when we die we just reconfigure, we just
take different shapes. My mother's mouth dropped.
Om Namah Shivaya, she said. Umba Gumba Lumba,
my father answered, and moved his hands
around his chest like a monkey, then told us
he loved us and went to bed. Be grateful for your love,
my mother said. It makes your heart so strong.

Taije Silverman, guest speaker at Mythic Journeys '06, is the 2005 — 2007 Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University. She holds a BA in English from Vassar and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. Her poems have been published in Pleiades, Ploughshares, and Poetry and merited fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia. Her poem To Keep What I Love (published in Poetry, April, 2004) may be read on her Emory website.

This poem is published with the permission of the author. It is copyrighted material and may be reproduced only with the written permission of the author.

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