Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann
On Your 11th Birthday
Mary Paterson
You, at the height you are exactly now.
Nearly taller than your mother, let’s go back
to back–see? Your hair in tumbles of curls
your limbs still bendy with childhood,
your home
these rooms we crawled inside
when you got here, barely shed
of our own downy skins,
puffed up with the love of it,
with the cocksure of it:
We are going to make it new.
And you
were the magic, and you were the spell–unnatural
sounds incanted to our bed by already–you,
dark eyed and radiant from the second
you swept across my belly & now,
breaking my height, you. Next time
we make a mark you’ll be
beyond me, and I will never carry the future
from the bathtub again, you
universe in a green towel, you
my most unbroken
promise.
Mary Paterson
You, at the height you are exactly now.
Nearly taller than your mother, let’s go back
to back–see? Your hair in tumbles of curls
your limbs still bendy with childhood,
your home
these rooms we crawled inside
when you got here, barely shed
of our own downy skins,
puffed up with the love of it,
with the cocksure of it:
We are going to make it new.
And you
were the magic, and you were the spell–unnatural
sounds incanted to our bed by already–you,
dark eyed and radiant from the second
you swept across my belly & now,
breaking my height, you. Next time
we make a mark you’ll be
beyond me, and I will never carry the future
from the bathtub again, you
universe in a green towel, you
my most unbroken
promise.