Properties of Fracture

by Linda Aldrich

To break off edges of ice with my foot
hastened spring — the more cracked loose
from the continent of hard, the better I felt,
the quicker my release from rubber boots
and leggings, where my white asparagus
body lay inside a starched dress and prickly
petticoat, stuffed into snow pants, jacket, scarf:
a thick, zipped package making its way
to third grade for the love of Miss Carson
and her many colorful shoes, for the perfection
of her cursive s’s cresting on the idea of beach,

but mostly for her rocks and minerals
on the long table covered with butcher paper —
village of density and striation, igneous
and metamorphic, petrified wood, slippery
soapstone, garnets tumbled from sediment,
and in a cup, obsidian tears shot from fire.

When spring came, I dug up drab stones
like dirty potatoes from under the swings,
smashed them to brightness with my father’s
hammer, and put them on her desk before the bell.
After the pledge of allegiance, after she took
attendance, finally, finally, “Who brought me
this lovely quartz?  And mica!  Class, did you know
people used to make windows from mica?
Are these from you?” she said, smiling her wide way
into me, and she would never know how my dense
universe fractured into whorls of light, pumices
of moon.  Geodes I would come to know later,
how summer’s embers bed down inside us.