OTHER THAN A PAPERWEIGHT

            Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once they grow up.

            —Pablo Picasso

Perhaps it was a jewel flung from the belly dancer’s navel 

            whose hips shimmied so, she became a whirl of silk;

            her nose and mouth covered, her eyes fixed.

Perhaps it was a hiccup under water, a belch no one heard

            from the Bottom-Feeder, that hideous sea creature

            who noses in the muck because his eyes are sealed shut.

Perhaps it was the pupil of the revered Egyptian cat,

            the obsidian sculpture guarding the child’s tomb,

            lifelike in the moonlight, ready to tackle.

Perhaps it was the last drop of truth serum in the pickle jar

            whose lid was rammed into the incisors of a fallen angel

            before he descended the cold, spiral staircase.

Perhaps it was the pocket of air I trapped when I flipped over

            the rowboat, dogpaddled furiously to breathe

            what was borrowed, forgot the oars were floating away.

Perhaps it belongs to Cyclops—the tragedy occurred on April 15th

            many storytellers ago—he shouldn’t have been picking his nose

            with a stick: everyone knows it’s slippery, when wet.

Maybe it was the million-dollar fossilized Brontosaurus tear

            in the smudged encasement on loan at the museum,

            around which all the school children pressed.

Maybe it was my brother’s prized possession: a balled-up spider web

            he bravely stole with a broom handle, buffed with spit

            and dad’s shoe polish—that he then lost, or traded.

Maybe it was my ovaries that went into overdrive, produced an egg

            of ostrich proportion, shocking the medical world—

            the press’s sound bite compared it to immaculate conception.

Maybe it is my mother’s doing—this planted spy device. This vigilant

            evil-eye probably records my every move and yours too,

            inverted and backward, reports back to her, gets it all wrong.

Maybe it is just a paperweight in the storefront window,

            showcased in a ray of light. Or could it be the dark space

            between my hands, cupped in prayer?