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Family Altar, with Cast Spell 

When she is alive, my nana tells me five stories from her family:

 

A shoe, a bar of soap, a shell, a fiddle.  One story is just a breath. 

 

She sets them out on a rickety side table made pretty with a crocheted runner.

 

My nana says,   there isn’t much to say about my past.    She gestures 

 

to the rickety table,

 

the five brief stories. 

 

Her mother died when she was three and she doesn’t remember her. 

 

Her mother, with thirteen living children (and four in the grave), loved to dance,

 

had a temper, chose her faith. They were poor. The poor don’t have a lot of paperwork.

 

I find my nana’s father’s face, immigration document: black and white, serious. 

 

I find my nana’s mother’s death announcement: after an illness 

 

and the delivery of a baby, who rests with her now.

 

I trace the perimeter of the wobbly table with my trailing fingers, I touch the shell, the soap—

 

I could cast a spell with these five stories.           I tuck the breath

 

into an envelope, lick it.     It’s tempting to say this is all I have.     It’s tempting to say

 

this is not enough to keep a girl alive. 

 

Megan Leonard is the author of Larkspur Queen and book of lullabies. She is the founder of The Writing Mentors.

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