Between
Heaven and the Bedroom
Eugenia
Leigh
Somewhere in the city with her
slip-proof
shoes and apron, our mom
locates an angel
tall as miles. Mom pushes up
her sleeves
and—at the angel’s nod—sprints
to the back of the angel,
grabs a fat
sheaf
of wing—its feathers thick as
ropes—
and climbs
and climbs. Every night
she climbs. And every night,
she returns,
flakes of holy in her hair.
She
returns—work shirt
wet with angel drench—to a
bedroom of
crumbs,
half-eaten margarine and jam
sandwiches
my small sisters and I
assembled
on the carpet. She is grateful
we ate
something.
Then, her ear to our mouths,
Mom listens
for sleep before launching her
secret
lullaby—her sturdy hands on
our
foreheads—
her prayers pouring over us
like torrents
of wild comets. And we are so
entirely
awake—three little girls—good
at
pretending,
toughened from having to have
been small
adults
before Mom came home. Years
later, the
day
my sister’s car spins across
six freeway
lanes
then stands, upright,
unbent—my sister
shaken
and unbruised—I discover a
fleet
of little angels on their
knees,
cultivating
a humble garden in my bedroom.
I realize
then
that our mom must have come
home
with armloads of them.
She must
have begged
for these little
angels—collected them
from God
like tip dollars. Or
maybe they
tumbled out
on their own—out of her
infinite tongues—
as we found sleep beneath her
desperate
whispers.
Eugenia
Leigh
is a Korean American poet who lives and writes in Brooklyn. She holds
an MFA in
Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and has taught poetry to high
school
students and incarcerated youths. Her poetry is forthcoming in Relief Journal and Sow's Ear Poetry Review.