we’d be in the apartment above the pastry shoppe
where downstairs my father made cannoli and eclairs and rum baba
and my mother made trays of butter cookies and rang up customers
and balanced the books.
The El would still be roaring past our living room
shaking the couch in its wake.
Janine would still be the most popular kid in class
lugging home more Christmas gifts than any of us ever would,
clinging to Grandma’s leg when it was time for her
to go, coercing Julia
to ride her bike twenty-six blocks in the rain
to get her Nathan’s.
Julia would still be testing limits–
eating a bottle of St. Joseph’s orange aspirin,
promising our father’s Italian ices to the entire class,
sticking our cat Gigi’s head in the fish bowl to see if it would fit.
Nellie would still be that gleaming sliver
in my mother’s and father’s eyes
another blue-eyed capodosta seven years into our future.
If we still lived where I was born,
I’d be holding out my arms for my mother
who used to sing “Close to You” to me
then left for work.
I’d still be writing on anything I could find:
walls, order forms, my mother’s yearbook.
My father would still be climbing the stairs at 9 p.m.
smelling of almond paste and cigarettes,
brushing his five o’ clock shadow against our tender skin.
My mother would still be at the stove
giving everything she had away.
If we still lived where I was born,
we’d have those couple of hours a week
around the Formica table,
the four of them counting the cash after dinner,
putting it in a canvas bag for the bank
while my mother held me in her lap.
My mother and father would still be in their prime—
Isabella Rossellini and James Dean look-alikes
They’d still be fighting,
they’d still be making us,
we’d still be together.
