the beliefs we were born with

Reach up across a coal, brass night.
Reach up into a cut glass sky
of paused green stars we keep while
we spin in an orbit of refusing to fade and forget.

You’re still recruiting your hand- but
it gets softer the more you know
and your eyes try to glow, and open to enter
when you look forever at where what
went away was. It’s okay.
I can forgive you.

I can reach out from the dust I wear,
into a silence we knew when we were
woven in our religious innocence together.

But now, slide along against a cold, blue wall.
Follow the dark, photo-less hall that leads
away from the dirty deliveries you
sleep on, sent out by the dreams you
wake from. Dreams of you, your little girl.
It will be long. But keep on, recording,
until you reach the room where my child still
lays awake- unchanging, keeps her curls.
She is waiting for you. I have always
been. Waiting

car by car, in that play house we built
on cards and the beliefs we were born with.
We didn’t lose our crowns in the night,
they were gone with what we saw in that
false, bright light. A child is born to her mother,
but not through evidence. They see each
other. The world is a secret between them,
Tip toeing, room to room, saving laughter.

I am waiting. That homeless sun will not
rise again without us, just little girls,
just the same, still, never a place for it
to grow. I know you know
the wish is not lost without time.
I cannot leave you all the way behind.