Some Things Must Change

A Dozen Years

The braille of pine door-frames and oak stair-rails guide my groping
palms up fourteen steps to you.
Branches outside your window melt
into monkey faces when you waken wide-eyed.
Your fear is the only voice that still pulls me from my dreams,
forcing me to see the slender shadows that shine
on moon-bright nights. Street-lighted halls whisper
my way through the the house that speaks
the secret of little girls growing.
Each night, for a dozen years, we lie together, warm and woven,
for awhile. I hold you, in limbo, while you grow in my arms.
Memories of your infant self, sweet with milk-breath fingers,
find their way into the midnight room.
The once fat-padded body now pokes me with sharp elbows and knees.
Your fragile, velvet cap I used to stroke is now a plaited rope,
it tickles my lips with its fringe.
You clutch your dissolving childhood with a death-grip,
but soon you must slip from me, into a woman's form.

copyright 1996 Eileen Osgood aka Eileen Sagona Keister