For Nora

I named my son

"Ernest Hope Hemingway"

because when I adopted him

I wandered the streets of Berkeley

finding bookstores and buying

fiction for cheap in 2020;

his previous owner

telling me she'd named him

"Hope," because he was

their family favorite, during Covid -

as if names, and made-up stories

could save us from

a world gone completely insane,

which as it turns out, they did

I would go home and feed him

watching him devour

every square inch of my apartment

while running my fingers along

the spines of books that had

existed for decades, like my copy

of The Sun Also Rises,

by Ernest Hemingway,

that I had bought in Boston,

when "hope" wasn't a word

I'd use to describe anything,

moving me to California,

where my son loves me

more innocently, more fully, than

almost any real person

besides my husband (amongst others),

despite any virus existing -

Ernest (Hope) Hemingway

makes the madness interesting

his little sister, Nora,

is our newest addition -

and like literature,

she will be the gift

that keeps on giving

despite it all, despite everything