Picture: thousands and thousands of tiny black seeds, jostling within a young woman in transit.

On the train toward home, little old white women clutch their snap-shut leather purses primly. A young black man snoozes, his dark head propped against a window black with the blackness of the tunnel and lit up with the lights that glow under the bay all the way to Oakland. Crouched near the door, an old Asian man holds signs loosely wrapped in black plastic, the letters are all Chinese. A child watches me, his elbows propped on his thighs, his chin resting on the cradle of joined fists. His eyes gleam like sky, fringed lush and darkly.

Close my eyes and I see them: these seeds, gleaming full of mysteries, germinating within me. Quivering, after reading a good book or a long-awaited letter. Quiescent, waiting to burst into flower, after yet another wildly digressive, telescoping, microscoping, vigorous day-long conversation with sage Niva-licious, who leaves shortly for art school in Israel/Palestine. Alas for me, tremendous for my lovely Leo.

Yet, despite her departure (and the fleet-footed transit of others through my life), what I know will continue to germinate through books and letters and conversations, to shoot out of this loamy earth of me like magical beanstalks reaching for a castle in the sky.

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