It’s time to decide
whether we will stay in Vermont
or move to Texas.
Papa has called Mama and me to the picnic table
to take a vote. The air smells like ozone from the rain,
and the Full Buck Moon glows through a veil
of clouds.
“What do you say, Emiko?” Papa asks.
“Up to you,” Mama says.
“Not this time,” Papa says. “It’s up to all of us.”
Then he touches my arm.
I knew this moment was coming.
I don’t want to go to Texas.
I don’t want to stay here either.
I want to go back to Berkeley
and be with my cousins. But I have a feeling
my cousins wouldn’t be the same,
and everything would be different,
because I’m different now. I have changed in Vermont.
Papa’s waiting for my answer.
Didn’t he say to remember the past
but keep looking forward?
If we leave Vermont now, I’d never know
what it held for me.
I want to find out, so I vote
“Stay.”
“Now, Emi,” he says to Mama.
She looks at me and then at Papa
and says, “Stay, too.”
Papa rubs his hands together,
almost clapping. “It’s unanimous,” he says.
“Good things are in store for us here—
I feel it.”