The Wish
a poem
Here’s what you do
find the brightest one in the sky
Just there?
Yes, that’s it, baby
I see it, mamma!
Now look at it
and tell it everything you want in this life
But it can’t hear me
Sure it can, baby
It holds space for you
on the list of all the world’s wishers
.
My fingers grow wrinkly in the suds
of endless dishes
and the pregnant, persistent perception
of having done something wrong
heralded by heavy footsteps and sighs behind me
a light winks at me through the window behind the kitchen sink where my skin slithers down the drain, leaving dish gloves in their wake
wrapped in a nebular cloak of purples and blues, the star shines beyond the dark moon circles cradling my eyes
Is it the brightest?
who the hell knows
and mama is no longer here to
tell me
with her hair warm like bread
and her skin soft as a fawn’s belly
I know it’s all make-believe but I whisper to the star anyway
please, I say, send me . . .
more
the sink screams with a broken dish
I feel the scoff behind me
on the back of my neck
before my ears can even hear it
I tremble
then freeze like that fawn
hunted
nothing moves
except the scalding river before me
cleansing the casserole dish
(don’t you make anything besides this underseasoned shit?)
I scrub a silent apology into our sensible wedding china
and I wait
the tension is cut as my baby scampers in
mama mama mama
it's da bwightest one!
she says, nose on the sliding glass door
you gots ta make a wish mama!
I did, baby
did it come twoo?
the heavy footsteps peter out of the kitchen
and the heaviness
of years
wanes back to neutral
I look at her little button nose
and the crooked smile of a girl who still believes
yes it did, baby
it came true all right
I hold her with enough starlight
to fill a thousand of the black holes to come
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