When I was an ear I swallowed everything whole:
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata was dark maple syrup down my cochlea.
Mother sizzling onions in the frypan was a foot-tapping dance through circular canals.
Sisters slammed doors, quivered bony labyrinths.
The buzz of Father’s knife sharpener sawed at my drums.

When I was an ear, leaves crackle-teased my tympanic membrane on my way to school.

When I was an ear, rosary beads clacked and prayers flapped like bats.
Down the aisle the whoosh-whoosh of the nun’s robe.
The small desk creaked open like the door of a haunted house.
Lessons pulsed The Crusades and Marco Polo.
Horse hooves thumped and water plashed
as Crusaders clashed and Marco Polo sailed to China.

When I was an ear, a squad of lead pencils scratched sums.
I was on alert, something about a test.
The visceral dread – the proverbial fingernails down the blackboard.
The splash of vomit.
I plugged with wax.
Five vomits times four vomits equals twenty vomits.
Feet shuffled in.
The shoosh shoosh of sifted sawdust to mask the puke, then mop it.

When I was an ear, Hope was the bdddddiiiing
of the school bell ending the day,
the joyous rumble of the idling schoolbus shepherding me home.