11/

11/

When I was sixteen, my math teacher slipped me clues during tests
“Ka-hi-li, calme toi”, he’d say,
adding an extra syllable to my name
That math was an abstraction

It was another eight years before I got my driver’s license
The first time I drove the car alone
I swung it wide in my parent’s drive
and put a pole-shaped dent in the side door

It was a green 1992 mustang
When my gramma bought it, I was one,
wearing the clothes my niece wears now:
cute waving frills of pink striped cotton.

She was born seven months ago, 
weighing less than seven pounds
five months before you asked me to marry you,
and flew to a three day job somewhere in middle America

two days before they closed
the world’s longest continuous unguarded border,

three and a half months ago now.