My friend said tonight, on the phone,
that she'd learned on the farm where she works
that everything is transitory,
the workers
who stay for a few weeks--
young and strong,
from cities,
they live in tents
And the chickens she feeds
and chases after
when they run away,
their legs fast
their wings sprawling.

She said she's as good as killing them
when feeds them grain from her hands
because intention is what matters
and she's only feeding them
so they'll be food, soon.

She says she's realized
dirt isn't dirt
and even shit isn't shit
because some kind of magic will come over it
and it will become alive again
in lettuce or grains
or chickens' wings
flailing and falling
like windmills, like kites.

And I remember the moment I realized that, too,
in the 3 days I spent
sifting pebbles and dirt from grains of rice
on the porch of the kitchen of the ashram--
the rhythms of it,
alone in the sun,
the arguments in hindi all around me
and the mantra inside me
falling
like breaths
under water.

I'd sing it outloud, sometimes,
to keep from feeling alone,
and the music would sift through me.
And the pebbles weren't dirt anymore--
They were a part of the life of the rice
as it grew
in the air that was so hot it burned
the skin of the earth,
the ground so red and rocky,
food was coaxed out of it,
shaken from the stalks,
pebbles
still caught
under fingernails.

And when I'd find them, still, in the rice I'd eat at breakfast,
I'd remember their history
and my hands
rising and falling like
so many things--
empires, arguments, breaths,
lives.

And what I really mean to say is
tonight is the first night since my grandmother died
I can look through the drawer in the kitchen,
the one that holds the things she used everyday
the dirty post-it notes she bought in the 80's or 90's
in a plastic holder
in pastel colors.
They spent my childhood
next to the phone
or on the kitchen table.

These are the things that remind me
she was alive,
and now they are in a drawer all together,
even though they don't belong together,
the cat's collar next to the car keys.
I spread them across my bed.

Earlier tonight, I went into the garage
looking for a quiet place to talk on the phone,
and I remembered, suddenly,
that this where I'd felt safest.

We'd sit in your parked cadillac
in the dashboard light,
and eat saltine crackers from the glove box,
wrapped in plastic
You'd stolen them from restaurants,
and shoved them in your purse
like you had nothing to apologize for.
And we'd laugh about the crumbs
all over the upholstery,
and you never scolded me
for the dirt on my hands.