-The stories my daughter tells at three…
She lays on the bed. Morning light
starting to invade the room.
Her little arms resting on her belly,
as if in a form of contemplation.
She giggles to herself; every memory
begins this way, every daydream also,
and sometimes, her sleep is threaded
around the same giggles of imagination.
Her eyes glisten in the morning light,
the way you imagine the spark of epiphany.
With a curl to her lips, her head tilts,
her eyes search for daddy, lighting up the room.
Her smile widens when her search has ended,
and for a moment, she simply stares.
With a start, she forms the question,
the same she makes use of in a form of salutation:
“You remember?” she says, and without waiting,
she tells her story, with full assurance in her words,
the images she’s held onto from daydreams and giggles
and moments gone by, it is the only creedence that life has existed,
that life is, and she proceeds with her story, in its episodic structure
the same that dreams and giggles and memory, at three, are composed of,
until we start to fill in what we don’t remember, she continues
with the episodes she does remember, and nothing else.
“When you were little,” she says, “you rode your bike,
and scratched your hands, and got on again and learned,
then you got older and I was born and you fell in love
with your little monkey and taught her to ride a bike.”
Then she giggles.