TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

When my children were younger, I loved listening to them talk to each other. Sometimes I’d be making dinner in the kitchen, or folding laundry, or doing some work in my office, and I’d hear them chatting to each other in the living room.

Conversations between young children can be hilarious, or tender, or even heartbreaking. Now that they’re teenagers, I still get a kick out of hearing them talk, though now those conversations include a lot more “bruh” and “low key,” and some language they definitely weren’t able, or allowed, to use as little kids. But I love hearing them joke, and tease each other, and talk about school and friends and music. I love that they have a relationship of their own, completely apart from me, and I know that relationship will continue to grow as they do.

These days my younger sisters and I talk often about work, and friends, and family. We catch each other up on what’s happening in our relationships, and with our kids’ schools and sports teams, and we’re always trying to make plans for the next family get together — though with everyone’s schedules, it gets harder and harder each year to find time when we’re all free.

I wonder sometimes what my sisters and I talked about when we were young, coloring at the kitchen table, or swinging on the swing set in the backyard, or playing a board game. It’s out of reach to me, like dialogue overheard in another language.

Today’s poem eavesdrops on two girls playing together, and I find the dialogue between them so charming.

Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle
by Mary Szybist

Are you sure this blue is the same as the
blue over there? This wall’s like the 
bottom of a pool, its 
color I mean. I need a
darker two-piece this summer, the kind with
elastic at the waist so it actually
fits. I can’t 
find her hands. Where does this gold
go? It’s like the angel’s giving
her a little piece of honeycomb to eat. 
I don’t see why God doesn’t 
just come down and
kiss her himself. This is the red of that
lipstick we saw at the
mall. This piece of her
neck could fit into the light part
of the sky. I think this is a 
piece of water. What kind of
queen? You mean
right here? And are we supposed to believe
she can suddenly
talk angel? Who thought this stuff
up? I wish I had a 
velvet bikini. That flower’s the color of the
veins in my grandmother’s hands. I
wish we could
walk into that garden and pick an 
X-ray to float on. 
Yeah. I do too. I’d say a
zillion yeses to anyone for that. 

“Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle” by Mary Szybist from INCARNADINE © 2012 Mary Szybist. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org.