Small Kindness

After Danusha Lameris
The doctor called my office
with the results of a test that showed
my daughter at high risk for Downes–
something that ended up not being true–
but the doctor called anyway and said
“You need to decide,” as if deciding
was something to be done
between classes, between meetings,
as if deciding was something possible
ever, and I sat in my basement office
where for once I was grateful–no
windows, the boiler in the next room
its rattle and sputter and my whole body
rattled and sputtered and I couldn’t
cry, not yet, only tried
to take in the doctor’s voice, that
steel syringe saying “This often happens
with a geriatric pregnancy,”
and I took in the word
geriatric. I was
40 years old. I could feel
my daughter burbling inside me, already
a hint of the joy she would be in my life.
Later I walked out of my office
and into the cold Fall dusk and the crunch
of dead leaves and fallen branches.
I didn’t notice the boy, a stranger, not
one of my own students, until he stood
in front of me and held out his hand.
He said, “Ma’am.” He said, “Excuse me,
this is for you,” and offered
a tiny origami flower
in his outstretched palm.
It looked like a lotus,
that Buddha flower that blooms and floats
its roots so far away but still
connecting the blossom forever
to the earth that gave it life, the long
stem like an umbilical cord, though of course
I didn’t think umbilical cord then.
I simply took the flower, his gift

so lovely and fragile.
I kept it on the dashboard
of my car for years.

Lori Jakiela is the author of eight books, most recently ALL SKATE: TRUE TALES FROM MIDDLE LIFE (Roadside Press). Her next book, THE THINGS YOU CAN’T REMEMBER BECOME THE THINGS YOU CAN’T FORGET: A Memoir in Verse, will launch this June from Roadside Press. For more, visit http://lorijakiela.net