Radium

American Poetry Review, The, Jan/Feb 2001 by Gluck, Louise

When summer ended, my sister was going to school.

No more staying at home with the dogs,

waiting to catch up. No more

playing house with my mother. She was growing up,

she could join the carpool.

No one wanted to stay home. Real life

was the world: you discovered radium,

you danced the swan queen. Nothing

explained my mother. Nothing explained

putting aside radium because you realized finally

it was more interesting to make beds,

to have children like my sister and me.

My sister watched the trees; the leaves

couldn't turn fast enough. She kept asking

was it fall, was it cold enough?

But it was still summer. I lay in bed,

listening to my sister breathe.

I could see her blonde hair in the moonlight;

under the white sheet, her little elf's body.

And on the bureau, I could see my new notebook.

It was like my brain: dean, empty. In six months

what was written there would be in my head also.

I watched my sister's face, one side buried in her stuffed bear.

She was being stored in my head, as memory,

like facts in a book.

I didn't want to sleep. I never wanted to sleep

these days. Then I didn't want to wake up. I didn't want

the leaves turning, the nights turning dark early.

I didn't want to love my new clothes, my notebook.

I knew what they were: a bribe, a distraction.

Like the excitement of school: the truth was

time was moving in one direction, like a wave lifting

the whole house, the whole village.

I turned the light on, to wake my sister.

I wanted my parents awake and vigilant; I wanted them

to stop lying. But nobody woke. I sat up

reading my Greek myths in the nightlight.

The nights were cold, the leaves fell.

My sister was tired of school, she missed being home.

But it was too late to go back, too late to stop.

Summer was gone, the nights were dark. The dogs

wore sweaters to go outside.

And then fall was gone, the year was gone.

We were changing, we were growing up. But

it wasn't something you decided to do;

it was something that happened, something

you couldn't control.

Time was passing. Time was carrying us

faster and faster toward the door of the laboratory,

and then beyond the door into the abyss, the darkness.

My mother stirred the soup. The onions,

by a miracle, became part of the potatoes.