Two Poems by Alice White

Two Poems: Alice White

Hands You swat away so many hands, and then you stop. You’re tired. And they’re so insistent.

You let them do what they’re trying to do.

You let them reach inside you and take out what they want. Or to put in what they want.

Sometimes they drop a nail while they’re working and just leave it. You only know it’s there when you see it on an x-ray one day.

During the surgery to remove it, you find another nail. And another: a breadcrumb trail you start to follow back to that first acquiescence, that first night you resigned yourself to the hands. You find each nail you find just leads to another.

A L IC E W H I T E

Answering Her Question My sister taught me a parenting trick for when kids ask a difficult question like “Is Santa Claus real?” or “What is sex?”

Simply ask, in earnest, “What do you think?” and listen. At the least, it buys you time.

My daughter, three, in the car one evening, is silent. Then asks, “Mama, will I die?”

I just drive. Try to keep the car tethered to the earth. Somehow the trick surfaces within me and I ask, “What do you think?”

In the rearview mirror I see her smile looking out at the purple sky. She says “I think I will never die.” I tell her “That’s what I think, too.” And I do, I do.

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