For Ava and Lydia on Another Planet
May you always be parading through your house in your new dollar store underpants
carrying your new dollar store umbrellas.
May you be perpetually scooping dirt from your sandbox shovels into the gaps around burlapped roses.
May you be teacher and student forever, you Ava, doing downward dog with
the full intensity of five, you Lydia,
losing your balance because your chubby legs have had only two years to practice.
And may you, Ava, spell “looked” l-o-o-c-t for the rest of your life and never lose
the ear that finished “Cinderella” with a “u” in your story where she finds a p-o-n-e
and, living happily ever after, rides it.
May neither of you forget how to follow the wavy blue crayon lines you’ve invented,
at the end of which flocks of birds startle from the wild plums.
May you never be higher to the ground than you are now, for without you, who will admire the tiny yellow flowers on the heads of grass?
May you love me infinity plus infinity, and if that fails, then more than all of outer space.
And when my Saturday car breaches the curve of your hill, may you be watching at
the window, then be my two little suns forever, running out your door.
Printed from Cerise Press: http://www.cerisepress.com
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