Slammed out flat in the shade beneath the tree of firsts
That bends at its creaking waist to draw forth a lazy retort
From the river lying summery and fallow in its concrete,
She twists a little to the left; her toes shuffle themselves.
Yesterday she walked through the glass in the garage
Like a tottering, milk-plumped fakir when they’d just said not to,
Bit red twin wings into her thumb to keep from yelling
Loud as the exit door of a nightmare as the shards clinked
Arctic and lovely into the bloody measuring cup.
One night when the wind is wedged up against the white house
Like a self-defense instructor pushing fifty and desperate
To prove something, she’ll sit all knees and elbows
And teeth in the center of the temporary bed playing insomniac sentinel
Over the little city of cups on the carpet trapping spiders
She doesn’t have the heart to kill, and wait for company.
When the kindergarten teacher with her brown shield of hair and a message
Told them to go through the classroom and find something
Worth as much as they were and come back to show
Everyone, she brought back the coloring books and wished
She’d been as clever as the kid with the basket of pennies.
Because the bedroom fort never brings his amusement to a bore,
She plucks alliterative picnics from the sleeping bag’s acrylic weave
With pinched fingers as if they were dining on imaginary nits
And pulls his four years and hoarse giggles into the warmer shadows.
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