Predicting

Jacqueline Meldrum

"/" indicates a line break.

I think,/You know,/That there is beauty in predictability.

The hum of all that is regular resonates in the soft, the sweet, the easy./Yes./To recognize when i know myself, so mundanely, is the sweetest gift i might ever receive.

To recognize that, predictably, I have spilt something on my sweater- the same way my grandmother does, with all her smiles.

To know my bones will ache after a long shift, to draw a foot bath in a plastic tub long used for soaking laundry and storing halloween candies;

To be my mother's daughter, to hold her tightly and squeeze her belly until she laughs, to cry into her nightdress/All this

All this is sweet.

To hold myself closely,/To love me through the knowing of my own life,/To fall into happy routine and rise at noon and make rice just the way i like it and listen to the crickets at midnight as i tiptoe to the fridge, to overwater a plant, and drink too much soda and watch the stars pass through me and to simply

be?

At this, the world in my fist will say

"I can slow down for you now. Now that you know how to Be as you like.

I know you exactly as you like."

when i am predicting, i am in love/With the me who has yet to exist./With the me in my body./And with the me that has always lived like this.

I could not bear to think of another way.