Nobody. Not even the rain.

There is a poem by e. e. cummings that makes me think of Eliza.  I've always loved this poem, and never quite knew how to make sense of it.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers
you open always petal by petal myself as spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or, if your wish be to close me, i and 
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture 
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing


(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands 


Like everything else, I see this poem with a different perspective now.  Now that I have a daughter who is somewhere I have never travelled, beyond any experience I've ever had.

Now that I know what it is like to be unable to touch something that is too near.

I've always liked the poem's repetition of enclose-unclose-close.  Now it makes me think of the way I have felt surrounded by love, laid bare to pain, and isolated by grief, all at the same time. 

The power of intense fragility makes me think of her tiny little wrists and the fine eyelashes on her cheeks and the awe I felt holding her tiny little body and knowing that I would die for her if I could.  Nothing which we are to perceive in this world could possibly equal those moments of love, and that terrible, terrible ache.

Most often when I think of Eliza, I remember her beautiful, delicate, pale little hands with their long, slender fingers and the last line of this poem runs through my mind over and over again:  nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.

I really, truly loved her little hands.

I miss her so much.