Carmelina Fernandes-Kock am Brink
College Bound
As I press the tape along the skirtboard
Running the length of your new room
I walk the
Timeline I followed through
To your eighteenth birthday.
Covid-driven into the creation
Of an old-fashioned album: A safely
Immobile
Unadulterated travel
Into your life, from birth to online
Graduation, honours based on
Algorithms. What of it?
You reined in to success.
And there’s been time to digest.
Meeting you in stages along the sixty-six
Thousand pics on our cloud, sifting
Through the ages, sorting
Restoring, year by year,
The fluid order of things.
A monumental summer this
Labour of love.
In doing so,
My senses like razors cut into
Shots of long ago: Here a park on a
Vancouver afternoon, you rolling over uncle’s
Back before the ice cream treat,
Screams of children by the water, mottled
Green, the frisbee lying at the ready.
All this rushed at me in waves this
Re-journeying with you to
Beloved worlds, albeit through
The workings of
My own narrowed lens.
And now here you stand with your
Childhood in a book, complete with penned-in
Comments
Lest you forget.
You’ll now be walking the tightrope
Balancing
Accumulated jacketed visions against
Your own prisms of
Revelation.
Ah, when I recall freedoms of student life, my
Heart leaps
For you.
Explore, assert your views, point your phone
In all directions, correct the light.
But you are not the type for self-styling.
Your modesty on Instagram
Speaks volumes.
And that masking tape I’m pressing, the coat of
Paint which follows to
Brighten the shabby space
Transformed,
That Picasso still life
Meant to enliven your mealtimes,
Each of us holding on to a wing
Of yours, wishing it might
Tremble just a little.
Well, there’s nothing more for us to do
But drive on back.
Leave our front door key
In the familiar hiding place,
For whenever you decide on a
Surprise to what’s no
Longer your residence
Yet a shelter all the same, to draw
Respite from, before returning to
Another round
Of studied independence.
—Submitted on 08/24/2020
Carmelina Fernandes-Kock am Brink is of German-Indian background, grew up in Canada, and teaches English in Toulouse, France.
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