Bluebird

My mother's voice is at my throat —"Try a scarf in the neckline"— and on my lips: "Just a little lipstick." Today I'm wearing both. My "mother's voice," pitched high, carries reprimand and care: "No boom on the table!" My daughter swats me as I carry her away from the dearest activity on earth—sticks, stones, struck as if the coffee table were a flint. "Barbarian," I croon in heels. "What's that?" she asks and rips a nylon with a fingernail. She cries at the turtleneck pulled over her head. "I'll give you something to cry about!" I hush, succeeding for another day, or an hour—another minute late for work. Tonight I'll choose a lullaby: "Bluebird at my window," Mother sang to me, a voice that could broom sorrow through the door . . . A decal staggered on the painted bureau, blue wing seeking, finding no way out.