I dream I cannot fill myself with light
enough to warm me. I wake to you,
in your sleep, meeping out mama-
mama-cuddle-me and I am
caught in the twilight of remembering
when you were fully grown, and we sat
together, while I told you
how you clung to me,
as though the dark slid off—
as though I, the moon, could give up
my turn for your love—the sun.
But we are both asleep, mostly,
and I haven’t told you this story
yet, because the pillow still swells
from the night-heat of your hair
matted in lavender from the yard,
wet with rain from summer
scorch. Because I can still
tuck you up in the cradle
of my elbow, your legs spindling
over. Because your heartbeat,
thump-thump, thump-thump,
still synchs with mine. O, you
scratch into me, littlelove,
until my skin scales away,
until my eyes close
with the sound of you growing
each night further into your own
bones, these bones. O my
little fish, born to swim this nebula
of ice and flame. Can it be all
along that you knew our ancestry
of smoke, that you, having lived
as stars do, remembered
your start in me
and brought us both
back here,
to begin again?
O my kit, my litter of one,
I am your mother only
because you would have me.
It is our same strong legs
that means I will hold you,
our same long hair
that evidences you,
onlyborn, as the child
of this one so lost. So lost
that the constellations,
have forgotten themselves
from me, but reshape now,
new for you—and you,
my mapmaker,
orchestrate them
as once and ever—
This dream, little sleeper,
has not quite left me
and I am remembering
to open the window
for the light who waits
to wind back through.
Scoot-scoot here next to me:
I will be, will be—the shoulder
arc, the belly breathed up-
and-down, the nighttime chatter.
You will be so much more.
O fire-fish, swimmer of light
and time. O the night
has come again
to wake us, to dress
and ready us.
