each morning I wake up to
her beautiful sighs, her rosy
cheeks, skin like that of a
perfect porcelain angel knickknack, and the night of
endless screaming and thrashing in
her confining crib
is forgiven and close to
forgotten. she opens her perfect
olive eyes and I can’t
believe this is the same creature that woke
up howling
with rage and anger at
simply being
a helpless baby.
I put my arms around
her tiny warm body, press my lips to the top
of her head, tell her everything will
work out in the end, hope she will
someday forgive me as well.
Holly Day has been a writing instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review, and her newest poetry collections are Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press), and Book of Beasts (Weasel Press).
Sparks of Calliope 