Rebecca Watkins holds an MFA in poetry and an MSed from the City University of New York. Her poems have appeared in Sin Fronteras, New Feather’s Anthology, The Roanoke Review, Anderbo among other literary journals. Her creative nonfiction has been shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Field Guide to Forgiveness (Finishing Line Press 2023) and Sometimes, in These Places (Unsolicited Press 2017). Rebecca is a writer and educator based in Nyack, New York.

Repairing  

My dad came home with holes the size
of cigarette burns in his T-shirts from chemicals.
Later, when it was a factory he owned, 

although he was not a young man, 
he hung above tanks of sulfuric acid 
repairing exhaust vents. 

He said he wasn’t surprised when cancer came. 
It has seasons though and, in its absence, 
he holds a paintbrush without wincing, 

a passion he found after he retired.  
I always thought I couldn’t truly know him
until I repaired what had been broken between us,  

like the time that, as the smallest, I had to
shimmy into the crawl space under the floor
on elbows and knees while Dad shined a flashlight 

talking me through how to epoxy the cracked pipe. 
My heart hammered, not from the shape
of confinement, but the fear that I’d mess up. 

Even now when there is nothing more to repair,
I still hear him talking me through the dark
saying, “Careful. I’m here.”

Unearthing

It used to be that nostalgia only visited when
rainy days beckoned, but now certain
memories claw demanding their due. 

I can’t tell you why the names of some have been lost 
or why the longing to see some faces just once more 
lingers in a heart that beats for another. 

What lessons this body keep and which did it shed
like blood in the toilet proclaiming no child?
A relief or an ache depending on the decade,

but if I’d borne those children, would I have the same
sadness, the same smile? Without them, these hands 
have become skilled at unearthing love.

To Do List 

• Remember Dad’s surgery is Tuesday when they freeze his neoplasm long enough for him to outlive his brothers—one proactive about dying as he draws smoke into his bad lungs, the other, a hermit married to a hermit wife.

• Remember even though the birds regale your porch with droppings, their chirps make the day feel friendly, as if God wanted us to notice life more than death. 

•  Remember the conversation when Dad asked, do you and your husband talk about the future?

• Remember how you didn’t want to know why that question pissed you off.

• Remember you are most likely not angry at your husband, the man who gave you an engagement ring with a stone the color of your veins/ the color of your eyes/ the same as the New Mexico sky on cloudless days that you say you don’t miss, not in the spring anyway when crimson tulips and lemon-yellow daffodils spill down the hillside.

• Remember your husband does understand you enough to give you silence when your skin hums and you can’t cry because you’re fifty and you’ve held your breath for too long to let go now.

• Remember to drink enough water/to get enough sleep/check your breasts for lumps because it feels like a matter of time before you, too, will sacrifice them to keep on living.

• Remember you aren’t sad/ you are just tired/ you want to live more/ want to work less/ create something big enough to leave a mark before you go in case there aren’t birds in heaven and wings don’t mean what you think they do.