I am the poem

a poem

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I am the poem

Toddler says she has a meeting and needs my pearls,
she forgot her pants but say its okay because she’s a bear
and bear’s have fur coats. She asks for some lipstick,
guess she’s figured out my one trick to looking sharp
while working from home, worn down on the inside
and worn out on the outside, but nothing a thrift-store
blazer and some bright lipstick can’t hide for a 45 minute
Zoom call. She comes downstairs three minutes later with
a book in a laundry basket. “My meeting is over,” she says.
“I wrote this book.” She chucks it at me as if it’s no big deal.
She thinks this is my job. Lipstick and pearls, three minutes
and a book appears, bound and fully edited. The laundry
basket and her smeared lipstick remind me more of reality,
but I like her version better. “I’m done with my meeting
and now I can play with you,” she says, quoting me to me,
daughter to mother playing mother to daughter. She smiles
and hugs me. I didn’t realize I was magic. I woke up this
morning at 5 AM with the baby, thinking of all the writing
I might accomplish before the house began to shake with
life, but all he wanted was to be awake and held, to bounce
and nuzzle me with his warm cheeks and pinch at me with
newly autonomous fingers, making marks and even drawing
some blood, not out of willful unkindness, just unrestrained,
newly born joy. He bounced and gee-ga-ed as if to tell me,
“I am the poem, Mom.”

I am the poem.