Gap Year

• I remember your Moses basket before you were born
• I’d stare at the fleecy white sheet for days, weeks
• I’d talk to you, my close stranger
• I took you home on Monday and lay you in your basket
• Now, I peek in your room and stare at your bed hardly able to imagine you back in there sleeping
• I follow your trails on my Times Atlas
• Have you considered altitude sickness,Christ, he’s sixteen thousand feet above sea level
• you have a new haircut
• you were lying cross-legged withan index finger resting sophisticatedly on one cheek
• He canny see everything. Tell him to come home
• And now you are not coming home till four weeks afteryour due date
• I feel like a home-alone mother; all the lights have gone out in the hall, and now I am wearing your large black slippers, flip-flopping
• My heart soars like the birds in your bright blue skies
• My love glows like the sunrise over the lost city
• I have a son out in the big wide world
• A flip and a skip ago, you were dreaming in your basket