DAYCARE PRAYER

Your face pinched and angry

as you lunge for your shoes

Inside me bicycle wheels spin
The baskets of bread I’m fetching, see?
Un velo est tres romantique—I think?

But when you scream, baguettes go flying
their spokes pop like bubbles over my picnic
Raining on this parade we’ve had 
since your body was made (in mine)
(what a festive time it’s been)

Now two years later our tour changes course or ends
kneeling on this carpeted doorstep
where the bells chime my leaving you
again and again and again

This poem is the hanky I wipe your face with
I see now you’ll be wounded where I can never fix

Joanna Grace Brewer, have mercy on me.