you start with lines on a page scatter shot up and down, left and right. a rough idea of rough corners and rough openings with rough measurements.
then you get the numbers, drag the tape measure across this way and that, fiddle and squint for the numbers. you jot them down, you make notes, you try to file it away in your head and redo the lines all over again. cleaner, neater, more precise.
you look up in books how doors sit in walls, what holds what. the difference between a king stud and a jack. how many cripple studs should be wedged between headers. you research what type of closet door you want, how wide. you remeasure again, try to account for the expected deficit of a 2×4 (which is really 1.5×3.5) and the thickness of sheetrock.
you’ve measured at least four times, and you still have yet to lay a single piece of wood.
you buy the wood, you lug it upstairs. 20 pieces of 2x4x8. it’s a bit of strain. but you do it knowing that it’ll sit there for a day or two before you actually do anything more.
just at the cusp, you ask around, things to consider, others that have done this sort of thing before. your father almost talks you out of it, but comes around and realizes that building a closet between the rooms is the lesser of two evils, the other being tearing down all the walls on the second floor and repartition it entirely.
and then you start. this piece against that. measuring, cutting. this piece here holds up this one. the weight travels down to here and spreads along this flat piece along the floor. you measure and cut and sometimes cut again, to shave off an eight of an inch here or there. in some places, you use a hammer to wedge one into another. every once in a while, you grab hold of a stud and shake the frame. you tighten whatever you hear is loose, you shake the frame to be sure it is sturdy.
you shake the frame until its done. you pull it this way and that, think of how your children will bump into it, push furniture against it. will it hold? can it hold?
you cut open the other side of the wall, where the other half will be shared with the younger sibling. within the opening, you prop another frame, careful not to break the wall, but wedging it, securing it all the same until the framing is done. the rest is window dressing; sheetrock, tape and spackle; sanding, priming and paint. tedious work, finishing.
but before that, you grab again one end of it and shake. you move across the room and grab another and shake again. it does not move. and while you’ve gotten to the point where it no longer moves, it still moves you.

i see you with ioanna and i am filled with a kind of sadness. i wish you were my father from the very beginning. i wish you had held me in the hospital when i was born and i wish it was you that brushed my first set of tears out of my crying eyes. i wish that it was you who had a hard time changing my diapers and it was you who laughed when i ran around the house naked. that taught me how to ride a bicycle. how to kick a ball. how to use a hammer. how to fix things. i wished that i was young again and it was you from the very start. i wish it was you from the very start and you could have fixed me before i became broken. i see you with our daughter and there’s a little smile on my face as i think “how lucky she is to know her grandfather from the very beginning.”

all these things matter everywhere, from the sound of your fist slapping the pavement to her mouth opening laughter or weeping.
all these come down like spent ballons exhausted, world weary, liitle more than withered skins succumbing to the weight of it, of them, of you, of me. drifting.
i find no comfort in rest, find no comfort in silence, find no comfort in the swelling urge to repeat myself, over and over, outward, to matter. to make all this matter, the knuckle of my finger, the hem of your skirt.
but then the delicacy of how she holds things, between thumb and finger.
and then there is that, and then there is her. the immensity of her, the nowness of it, her all the time, never yielding, never interrupted, never complacent. so there, in the thick of it, becoming all of it, devouring it, an angel to all things, an angel of all things, blinding light wiping out.
all things between her thumb and finger, what a grasp that would be.

at the park she climbs up the slide, all of two and a smattering of months. i watch from a couple of feet away as she reaches the top and sits. she glances over her shoulder, tangle of hair in the corner of her smile.
then she’s gone. just like that.
time is a vicious, persistent beast. it laps at our feet, follows us around, it never leaves us alone. there is no reasoning with time. it does not bargin.
in another life, we have a house full of children. she has a big brother and a little sister. we never aborted one, we never lost the other. in another life i never give up writing because it still matters. in another life you do not have to work. you’re not riddled with exhaustion and guilt. in another life we stroll through parks and grassy knolls while the kids run. i make big production of dinners i cook out of cook books whose recipes i never follow and everyone laughs between faces. in another life i sit in a quiet den with wooden shutters and watch the sunrise while you all sleep.
in another life i am everything i could be to my family and to myself. in another life, time doesn’t matter.
i watch my daughter climb up the slide and turn away from me. i watch her go down and disappear. i hear her laugh as she disappears.
tears in the sun, i watch time disappear.