There are some things that stick with you.
some combination of emotion and the senses
that keep a memory alive,
like the morning I awoke to the Monarchs,
mid migration, all the limbs on the trees alive
with butterflies flittering like leaves in a breeze.

I remember carrying my son, not yet a day old,
wrapped in a blue crocheted blanket
and my arms. How careful I was
as I got into the back of the car
to take him home. And how hungry.
I hadn’t eaten for thirty-six hours, at least.
We stopped for hamburgers.

Three years later, in a hospital this time,
a nurse brought my daughter to me.
She was as light as as a hollow-boned bird.

I was embroidering a gown for her.
As I set the embroidery aside to take baby into my arms,
the nurse exclaimed, “You love her!”
as if that were in question.

I remember the first time I made love
to the man I’ve slept with for the past 38 years.
Maybe I knew then that he was forever.

And it only takes a tiny jog to the memory
For me to see the balloons
rising from the valley floor
that morning in the Sandias.