Early morning.  The woodpecker stabs at knobbed bark.  An insistent drumming in the quiet of snow, ice, and early light.  The sky blue white pink sinks almost to earth.  Its translucence  daunting. I take measured steps.  Memory by memory.

I’m nine, polishing my father’s wing tips, rubbing the felt cloth across the front of the shoes, erasing all signs of snow and slush till they gleam with a high black gloss.

Step by step.  I breathe in and out.  Out and in.  Shut my eyes to a dizzying silence.  The mud and slush disappear.

My young mother chips at her egg, gently tapping the shell, delicately spooning mouth after mouth of yellow between her lips.

I’m ten.  My patented feet beat out a rhyme on the sidewalk: “Step on a line break your father’s back; step on a line break your mother’s spine.”  I had to be careful.  I have to miss thunderbolt cracks in the sidewalk.

Later much later I am older.  I touch my elderly father’s thin wrist.  His forearm dotted with purple blood clots.  His eyes blank as the surface of the sea.

She cracks the egg too heavily, yellow drips over the edges of the white porcelain cup.  I spoon the egg into her mouth, days before her ranting.

The sun is an electric blue disc, shrouded in mist.

Dizzy I see patches of earth, sky, and fog.  Falling, falling away from me.