Abecedarian: On Putting A Child To Bed

After two more bites, you can have dessert. Finish you milk.

Blueberries roll off the kitchen table, bouncing off the linoleum into dusty corners.

Can you scrape your plate into the garbage? Leftover rice, a twice-bitten chicken nugget. I told you, stop picking your nose.

Don’t make me lose my temper. Take off your clothes, your underpants, too. And the other sock.

Enough bubbles, already. Is the bath water too hot? Wash your fingernails. Peach-limbed, you

float face up in your wet rectangle. Skinny-armed, knobby-kneed, shin-bruised. Tonight, my mind is a

grated carrot. A peeled turnip – squat, flaking dry. You used to be a soft tadpole encompassed in my pond.

Hanging over the toilet, I watch water slosh over the bathtub’s brim. Once, I cradled you in my body. Now you live out in the world.

In the mirror, my eyes are hollow wells. Now, your form is never still. Your face a twitching blur.

Just stop talking, so I can hear myself think. My body knows it is aging. Under your breath, a murmuring of battles,

kicks and cries, explosions, howls of dying soldiers. A red plastic boat capsizes in foamy waves. No survivors. All is

lost. A towel-rubbed tummy, ribs protrude from your miniature chest. Through the window, shards of sunset--

mauve, amber, saffron. The sun whispers: why don’t you just sit here and watch me fade?

Now rinse off the soap, or you’ll itch. Stop shouting. Why can’t you stand still while I brush your teeth? You sting me and are wild.

Ok, look. This is the third time I’ve told you to stop that. An escalation of threats. You are both familiar and foreign. No flinging your

pajama bottoms across the room. Your words are rubber balls that bounce off narrow corridors. They are filled with salt and spite.

Quiet, now. Today, you are made of crayons and sharp sticks and pepper. I can never get close enough, anymore. A

reluctant fisherman, I catch the anger, the rawness, the

sorrow you throw into my net of motherhood: flames of frustration,

tears of disappointment. They flop like silvered fish. Should I collect them

under the dock? Clean them in buckets, rub them until they glisten? Until they fold into memory?

Very good, now. Lay your damp, shampooed head on my chest. Close the closet, draw the blinds, turn off the lamp.

When I read you a story, you have to listen. Dragons, bears, soldiers. Take your purple cough medicine. In darkness, fears

xerox themselves, emerge like gnomes. I know the days are long. Let your tears come. The world pricks you with thorns, tangles

you with burrs. I want to reabsorb you. Fold you back into my womb. To embrace you with lavender and lullaby. I want to be more

zen. If sleep was a cold seashell, I would collect thousands of them from night’s gritty shores. And place them beneath your pillow.

-- Finalist, Poetry Roundtable of Arkansas Poetry Day Contest 2023