My daughter fears the night

facing her bed alone, unstoried and abrupt.

She wants to come and join the din.

She does not know my sadness, my

self-pitying whine that I let slip

as prayer each hour over small matters

of money and home. She wants my arm

to encircle her, to shelter her from

her needs. “I want you,” she says, still,

as I hold her. “Here I am,” I say, still,

and she wants a story to fill the

empty spot somewhere that she feels like an

ache in a tooth with her tongue.

 

My daughter sleeps. I fight the peace offered me

tonight, more at home in my despair than in salvation,

than in a story of passion I find becoming

increasingly my own.