I Worry and I Wait

I think it is easy to worry.

They say you can worry yourself sick over something. Perhaps that’s what I’ve done.

I worry about polar bears in the doorways of small houses in a remote archipelago. The feeling of something so extraordinary made ordinary before your eyes.

And why was I crying in that cafe in Paris? I cannot remember. I cannot remember no matter how hard I try. You bought me a coat the next morning to make me feel better, though I do think either of us knew why. I worry about this too.

I worry I will not take well to growing old. That I will be the sort of woman who loses everything when she loses her good looks. Unable to navigate and negotiate the world without them.

I am afraid but I do not know of what, and everything I write begins with the same few lines. About the baby. About Paris. And about my mother’s hands.

These three ideas are strung together somehow but I cannot decipher why or what their relation is to one another. It leaves me swimming in my dreams.

It seems like a silly time to worry. But, I am predisposed to this and I look up words in other languages to try and explain myself. I think the Russians call it toska. They say no single word in the English language renders all the shades of toska. And I feel that. I feel in shades.