i
my life: marked by milestones
of meals, snapshots of snacks
shared over tables.
our house
was is always will be the family home.
I can’t imagine a time
when it won’t be
but that time will come
I wonder how many memories these walls
can hold. how many
birthdays, births, deaths, marriages, holidays, graduations
have been celebrated amongst
yellow wallpaper and floral couches.
we send everyone home with a plate
(or two)
(or three)
and still have two fridges stuffed with left
overs. my mother spends hours in the kitchen
with my aunt. they feed us all.
I sit and soak up the stories like fresh baked
bread saturated in sauce.
over cioppino, my uncle laughs and tells us all
again about the time my cousins returned
home from camp to discover an empty
house, because he and auntie carole moved
while they were gone. we talk about her,
about aunt carole and aunt carmella
and noni and everyone who isn’t with us
anymore.
we lost people, but they live in every story,
in every cheesecake my mother bakes.
ii
in the house I grew
up in, my mother
grew a garden; two barrels
of herbs in the backyard—basil, parsley, over
flowing mint crowding the rest.
I remember
planting beans one year,
but they didn’t make it.
my mother has the green thumb
in the family—she only passed it to
my brother.
my grandpa has a garden, too, filled
with tomatoes and peppers and herbs and
in the front yard—apricots and accidental
pomelos. in the backyard is a menagerie
of fruits; apple trees lining the
pool, plums and peaches hugging
the concrete fence on the corner
of branham and snell, one large
and magnificent fig tree that holds
our tire swings and covers the yard in sticky sweet seeds.
the yard is as full of life as the home that once
housed nine people at once. three generations.
iii
often I wonder if I can carry on
this legacy, if I will be home for
my family
for my family’s
family
—I cannot grow things like my
grandpa or cook like my mother. I burn
batches of cookies and undercook
squash. but practice makes perfect.
my mother taught me to make a recipe
my own,
to mix part of myself into it.
so I am practicing—
This piece was originally published by Jeopardy Magazine, May 2021
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