Tuesday, April 2
THE ENVELOPE It is true, Martin Heidegger, as you have written, I fear to cease, even knowing that at the hour of my death my daughters will absorb me, even knowing they will carry me about forever inside them, an arrested fetus, even as I carry the ghost of my mother under my navel, a nervy little androgynous person, a miracle folded in lotus position. Like those old pear-shaped Russian dolls that open at the middle to reveal another and another, down to the pea-sized, irreducible minim, may we carry our mothers forth in our bellies. May we, borne onward by our daughters, ride in the Envelope of Almost-Infinity, that chain letter good for the next twenty-five thousand days of their lives. (Maxine Kumin)