To hold. To swaddle as we are all swaddled, in black,
and see that the glee you levy will last past pain,
which whisper-shouts I am chronic to all of us listening.
To perfect stasis, and hold back an ocean;
to weave a cloud into a blanket, and watch you sleep,
wet and new, but growing cold; to know the terrible
coming true of fairy tales is a coming due; to recall
the sun surfacing over the bassinet; to promise nothing
except that you will get your chance.
I pull the covers up, the blinds down.
To feel the perpetual in your lungs, which pull at air
that knows suffocation is for fathers, for long last looks
and wanting wishes. To hang palliatives on the fridge
like magnets marking your developmental stages;
to the leptic levelling of soon, for it will be soon,
altering the delicately sown seed which started as need
but grew to withhold, and is here. A laugh!
Just weighted chance, something that flits from fists
that clench on the very air you breathe, the broken,
random air.
Footnotes
-
Previously published at www.cmaj.ca