Flying for Nana
…remember the lush cologne of pollen & the garnet bees
buzzing their cargo routes…– Gerry LaFemina
There was no rain the summer I was nine.
Our orchard withered. My younger brother lingered
in an iron-windowed children’s ward. I forgot
Bruce’s face, his voice. But on weekends, Nana came.
She was the scent of lilacs, the glow of a garnet stickpin
shaped like a bee. She was cardboard boxes of coconut cake
and thick squares of Sicilian pizza. She was mine as I perched
atop our fence beneath the dying McIntoshes, perfecting
my angles of flight. That was the summer I taught myself to fly.
Back against the fence, hands behind me clutching wooden rail,
I released one, then the other, leapt with arms outstretched like
Wendy Darling. Week after week, while I sought flight,
my brother stayed gone. Nana applauded my small miracles.
She kissed my wounds when splinters pricked my palms,
worked deep and festered. I loved and dreaded her visits,
knowing I’d soar for her, that afterwards she’d uncap
her garnet pin, ignite its tip with a safety match. She found
every sliver. Between each prick she pressed her lips
against my skin. Nana cradled my hand, hovered her pin,
landed it with small flicks. I hardly felt its sting.
Gail Braune Comorat is a founding member of Rehoboth Beach Writers’ Guild and is a co-author of Walking the Sunken Boards. She served as an editor for Quartet, an online poetry journal by women fifty and over. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Grist, and The Widows’ Handbook. She lives in Lewes, Delaware.
