She is my first daughter.
She eats a hole in my heart.
Soft hair, tiny fingers,
I couldn’t help with the compliments.
Flawless – not so much the mouth –
but the eyes – no restraint, all gush –
not the thing for a shared life.
She is three.
My life’s at a midpoint.
She loves to draw with crayons.
She knows little outside orange and blue.
It is up to me to worry about my aging.
She sees beyond me.
Her generation is toys and pets,
not beer-bellied ex-marines.
Her play is my failing kidney.
Her blocks, her tricycle,
do their part
to take away my balance.
She loves the click of wood on wood.
If only the body’s tension
could release as easily
and with just such a freeing clatter.
What I have given to this child
can be buried in her good night’s sleep,
even as it twists my vision,
hardens my arteries.
Her fair head in private time
is as innocent as her wall-paper bunnies.
I take trouble to stand and watch
and the trouble stays with me.
She dreams.
My heart is not nearly enough.
With bubblegum breaths,
she sticks it to rest of me.