The Youngest of Four

Being the last of four means having less of these old photos
And even less video. But searching through the boxes I found me

Mouth wide open with no teeth surmounting a giant car on its back
On the carpet of my grandmother’s living room

Arms up in a pile of dead leaves just big enough to swallow me
One is falling and I am reaching for it, sitting thanks to my sister
Who held me from falling back into the dried pieces of maple and oak.

Body flying on a swing with my knees up to pump and my hands out
To smile, next to my brother who’s cancer treatment had just begun
To puff up his cheeks and coat. I didn’t really notice then.

No smile sitting on my older brother’s lap, afraid of the quiet deer lying down
Because a deer ate my hair once. I looked as though I was crying silently.
My brother said silently with his arm petting the animal “I’m not afraid.”

Eyes straight ahead, with a mouthful of my hand, covered in chocolate pudding
From my nose to my then-white tank-top, chocolate handprints also holding
A spoon parallel to my shoulders, my tiny stomach half the size of the licked-over bowl.

Shirt off, gray sweatpants on, and a giant cassette player hooked to the elastic
Just below my belly-button. The chord made a V below my neck
I made a thumbs-up as I wondered around the house in my own world of music.

The last one to be breast-fed, last one to send off to pre-school
Then college. The last one to be assigned the least severe curfew
Last one to be trusted with a learner’s permit on 495, circling the district.

My finger circles over the mouth, arms, eyes, belly-button all glossy
All the same texture, all silent, all smaller and further back in time.
All full of the meanings we attach and detach, names and dates written on the back in cursive.
Names some of us will never forget until we are forgotten too.

But I can still remember these. We can still gather and search through boxes as a family
Still breathing and remembering how to remember, how to gather new forms that bind us
Beyond those barely-still-elastic rubber bands wrapped around our glossy silent selves
That cried and held and dared and survived, and mostly smiled.