The Fjord
Jennifer Skogen
It was a good memory: visiting Norway,
staying on a farm with my husband’s family,
eating waffles with cream and jam
cooked over a fire on the banks
of a fjord, like I’d stepped
into my own bloodstream and followed it
back in time to where my father’s family lived
years ago, one hundred years at least,
maybe more,
before I appeared on the long chain
of miracles that blood can perform:
love chasing us children down the years,
demanding we exist
despite distance
and time. Despite the great sea
that separated my mother’s ancestors
and my father’s.
It isn’t that I belonged to the cold
Nordic air that carried
sparks from the fire and held the perfect
scent of waffles overflowing the iron,
turning golden and decadent.
My last name couldn’t buy me passage
back to another life
any more than I could stop time
from sweeping me into another decade
past that memory on the beach,
with the grief and joy that rode
in the implacable current beside me.
All this to say
that I ate the waffle
they cooked for me,
jam dripping down my hands.
All this to say that we can live
through miracles.
