Poetry

1. i memorize our daily goodbye, commit it to memory until you return, just in case. on your way
out, yelling “in a while crocodile,” my “later gator” slips through the elevator doors as they shut.

2. strangers on the street often stop to marvel at the way we speak, a multilingual nomenclature that
only our transatlantic unit understands.

3. when you were three, on a trip to ikea, i let you pick a stuffed animal to buy, one of the big ones,
because your dad wasn’t there to say no. i thought you’d choose an elephant, but you picked a
djungelskog, the python. you told me his name was pilot, “because he likes to fly, fly, fly!”

4. on my 26th birthday, i went to the academy of sciences to see claude the albino crocodile. i
bought a stuffed version as a gift to myself. years later and an ocean away, he sits next to my
bed. you wanted a crocodile of your own, so we bought you a green one. you named him claude
too.

5. i’m always forgetting the difference between alligators and crocodiles. like possums and
opossums, i have to look it up every time.

6. your class mascot is a turtle, schildy the schildkröte. in german, a turtle is a shielded toad. a
reptile is a kriechtier, a crawling animal. when you were a baby, we taught you the sounds
animals make: a lion roars, a bird tweets, a giraffe hums, a turtle purrs.

7. this month in social studies, you’re learning about dinosaurs. “i wish we could learn about
dragons,” you say. “but dragons aren’t real,” i tell you. you roll your eyes and sigh.

8. when i was a child, turtles were my favorite animals. some mornings you crawl into bed between
me and your dad, rest your head on my chest, and tell me you’re a baby turtle and i’m your
mama turtle. my arms wrap around you like a carapace, my body your natal home.