Emily Koehn: “What Are We Doing With This Backyard”

What if I told you that backyards are for the kids’ diaries and the divide between the mothers who read the diaries and the mothers who don’t. On one side, the goldfish are buried. On the other, a bush tangles with weeds. On one side, the mothers stitch hats to cover eyes. On the other, mothers hold gold tails in their palms. For the kids in the backyard are making a carnival, bobbing for apples, and then somehow it’s already time for the metal detectors at school. Setting off something. How did we get here? the little girl asks her older brother as she tries to grab an apple from the lowest branch on their way home from school. For a cut in an apple. For the shape of moon. For the seeds curved inside the flesh. For the moon at the small of a back. What are you going to use that knife for? Or for the big one everyone says is coming and the backyard will ache and rock. For the apartment’s backyard: spot of cement and a container of dirt. Capture the look of the birds right here: can you see that closely. Remember whom you didn’t consider, that she’s just left walking in her own life. Just like we are. This is what I mean about diaries. Dig them deep in a yard of your own making, but if you have a spot of cement let’s talk about options. We’ll explore it and explore it until we’re undone with discovery, cracked up and foraged up loving this hardscape. We’ll steam it walk it out back, our madness, and do it in the way we know best.