punctured ovenbird It is rare, in a world where distance lodges in my throat like a fish bone, for me to stand in the center of a circle made of family and feel the spasms trying to save me from choking subside. Here are all the living branches of my family_tree—my aunts and uncles and cousins each occupying a folding chair, hands reaching for chips and drinks, hands swatting at wasps, hands showing what the sun does to our thinnest skin after decades of abuse. Youth belongs to my children now. The rest of us are in various states of something else, ranging from my own early middle age to an uncle approaching eighty years old. I ask if he’s going to have a party and he laughs. “If I make it that far I will definitely have a party,” he says. I say that I’ll have to come home for that one then have a sip of the gin and tonic I’m drinking in honour of my grandmother who has to do her living through me now since all that’s left of her is ashes and a diamond ring that made its way to my own finger when her own no longer had any use for it. Everyone eats pizza and tries to ignore their ailments—the diabetes chewing up a leg, a torn meniscus, a heart broken by a dog that came to the end of its too short life, a tweaked back. At the end of the evening everyone says, “it was nice to see you” and “I hope you’ll be home again soon.” I’m not sure what “soon” means. Six months? Eight months? Twelve? I don’t know when I’ll be here again. I don’t know how to make the intervening time feel real. I struggle to find my footing when my heart is always looking over its shoulder, craning to see the place it came from. I try to swallow around the ball of bone building in my esophagus. I learn to breathe through my punctured windpipe. 250805 what's it to you? who go blather from