I.
One winter before I was born
my mother stepped into an elevator.
The silent brass doors slid
together too quickly and she toppled,
landing face-first
in Baryshnikov's striped mink coat.
She told me this when I was six
and leaping, a blizzard of tulle
and breathlessness around
her rocking chair. As I remember it,
I say now, He was rude to you.
Did Baryshnikov really push you?
Short, she says, looking over
the Sunday Style section. I didn't say rude.
I said short.
photograph by Chuck Domitrovich
