RollingTurtle » How to Stop Running

Happy Valentine's Day, Space Shuttle Columbia

1.

Meghan and I got tired
of telling the six year olds to keep their hands
to themselves, so instead, we speculated
on what it would be like
to care for children
if the very fabric of the universe
tended towards gentleness. She imagined
basketballs, hurled at the object of a grudge,
deflating themselves in midair, refusing
to do the dirty work. I imagined carpets rising
to meet stumbling toddlers, concrete walls momentarily
transforming into tender rubber
at the moment of impact. Later, I envisioned
the bullets of the world
going on strike, sprouting little cartoon legs
and cardboard signs and marching
in tiny, strident picket lines
around the trenches of Asia. Would children
still try to lash out if the very walls held their hands?

2.

Sloshing home
through the snow-speckled blackness,
I finally understood the distance to Mars, why
there has never been a manned expedition. The trouble
with space travel is that there is exactly one direction
that will take you to landfall, to survival,
back to your child's thin embrace,
taut with accumulated worry.
An infinity of mishaps and poor calculations
lead to permanent darkness. Not even snow
out the port hole. Not even
dust. Nothing to push off of. Nothing
to swim in. Just waiting
for the oxygen to run out, or setting
yourself on fire. The fabric of the universe
does not tend towards gentleness, if there is
a fabric of the universe at all. Who would have thought
that an Israeli, an African-American and an Indian
could be so dead together?

3.

Arriving this morning, I came upon an anonymous swatch
of mint green oak tag, cut to resemble fabric,
abandoned atop my filing cabinet. At its center,
a maroon space shuttle, shadow of a rubber stamp.
And around it, these words: Happy Valentine's Day
Space Shuttle Columbia.
Do children intend their morbidity, or is it
just another game they play? A whimsy they indulge in
to hurry the worry along? Or is it the secret answer
they give us
when we order them to treat the world gently,
assuring them with the most incredible
grown-up confidence
that it will be gentle to them in return?