is a school day like every other
in the first week of the year.
Time isn’t real but still
it’s January, and scientists say
we’re gaining about sixty seconds
of sunlight even as the sun sets.
I wake up and feel closer to death
than the day before. I am a mother,
so I wait for my daughter at the bottom
of the stairs and I hold her hand
when crossing the street and when
we stop at the corner I run my fingers
over her ponytail like it’s my own hair.
She says there’s a cloud in the sky
that looks like a heart but I can’t see
what she sees. I am a mother
so when she is hungry I feed her
and when she asks me how to spell wolves
I explain how some nouns transform
in the plural. Man is men and tooth is teeth
and person who is murdered becomes people.
in the first week of the year.
Time isn’t real but still
it’s January, and scientists say
we’re gaining about sixty seconds
of sunlight even as the sun sets.
I wake up and feel closer to death
than the day before. I am a mother,
so I wait for my daughter at the bottom
of the stairs and I hold her hand
when crossing the street and when
we stop at the corner I run my fingers
over her ponytail like it’s my own hair.
She says there’s a cloud in the sky
that looks like a heart but I can’t see
what she sees. I am a mother
so when she is hungry I feed her
and when she asks me how to spell wolves
I explain how some nouns transform
in the plural. Man is men and tooth is teeth
and person who is murdered becomes people.
In memory of Renee Nicole Good, z’l, a poet and a mother
