January 7, 2018My Daughter, the Snow Bomb
My daughter undergoes bombogenesis every night.
At three in the morning she screams in her crib
as if she’s being chased by a bogeyman.
My wife and I wait to see who will get up
and bring our daughter back to our bed.
Usually it’s my wife who cannot bear to hear her cry.
My wife returns cradling her daughter to her chest
whispering, “Baby, Baby, it’s all right.”
But all night it’s not all right for sleep never to return.
My daughter twists and turns between us
battling some low-pressure system that only her little body
can detect. Every hour she changes location
four to five times, but always perpendicular to us,
forming the letter “H” on our queen-sized bed.
One hour her little toes tickle my nostrils
or heels knead the back of my neck,
and the next her head burrows into my back.
By morning my wife and I wake up sore,
bodies aching, and smiling as we look at our daughter,
hair stuck to sweat-encrusted head, our little queen.
from Poets Respond