the last blue iris

It is a beautiful summer night, in this first summer in 9 years that my boy has been home. He leaves exactly a month from yesterday for his freshman year in college, his stepbrother a month after that. I have a hard time thinking about what comes next, what it means to be a sort-of empty nester, though I have had some practice each summer for the last 9 years. I cut all my hair off last week. I applied for a literary grant, am getting my materials together for a moon-shot teaching gig which I am absolutely not famous enough to even be considered for. Academia is--I'd say weird, but really, it is likely normal--but because I was a single mother, because I have had to support my family and work as an administrator and have not had the opportunities to take on visiting professorships, go to writing retreats and conferences and network and put my resources fully toward publishing and establishing myself in the poetry world (three books notwithstanding), I am a fringe candidate at best....

It is hot. The neighbor is in her small garden, hair swept up on her head, the sky a haze. Behind us, a group of lithe young women have spread a lacy tablecloth over an ancient wood table, cleared their yard of weeds, are barbecuing and drinking out of red cups. Each of them in a shirt that barely skims their ribs, their taut bellies golden in the evening light. I wonder if I was ever that lithe; certainly, not that free at twenty four or five, or thirty, or ever. By their age, I was married, and if I am estimating them younger than they are, then a single mother. I am feeling uncertain about my body, about aging, these days. Some nights, I'm thrown awake by a hot flash soaking through my pajamas. When I was checking out a gardening book from the library on Monday, the clerk looked at the book and said "I should probably get into this eventually. That's what older people do." She then said she was turning forty soon, but clearly saw some chasm between her and me. I am...