Like a balloon with a loose knot,
the air has been seeping out, 
and I’ve been sputtering around the room, 
dusting under old photographs, checking 
expiration dates, emptying boxes,
and rinsing near empty jars.  

They asked for recent baby photos 
or even a picture of a nephew or a niece. 
“How about a picture of a favorite student?” they wonder, 
with the keening voice of their good nature.  
“Something unique to share with staff.”
And I wonder what to do. 

I remember when we clacked shut 
the shutters of the boy’s cabin 
all at once in the middle of the night.  
Later, we shared a box of lemon cookies 
on the rippling lake,
fingers white with powdered sugar.  
I floated on a kayak all to myself for the first time 
on the hush and pull of water, 
and we decorated with red hearts
the pictures of the camp counselors 
who all looked exactly alike. 
On this bright reel of towering 
pine trees and flag salutes,
I felt everything mattered and I could 
step out each day with a new face.  

I used to arrange my stuffed animals
(very cruelly) by preference
so the farthest one would be the only one
to be sacrificed to the wolves.  
Then I’d cover my feet tightly so 
that the disembodied blue hand 
under the bed with its long and tenuous arm 
could not paint me with its blue brush 
and mark me to become a blue hand
that would roam the neighborhood, 
balancing its arm like a snail’s shell and
painting other children blue.

I remember crying until my own cries
became a spiraling thud, bald and brazen, 
knocking inside my head like a stone,
and there only existed the possibility of crying. 
My fingertips and chest were burning and wet
like scalding ink, and I felt like I was stuck 
in a burlap sack loosening its stream 
of rushing silence to the ground. 

But that was only yesterday and the only picture 
of a baby that I have is a picture of myself 
howling in a bag of tears. 

The dust gapes back at me dauntlessly 
from the window pane and I imagine 
us all as blue hands forever destined 
to lurch slowly forward, 
dragged by our long-suffering fingers.

– Esther Sadoff