Sophie Lynne Creations

I still can feel the cool slipping of the sheets on my shins

Rubbing one foot over the other like a fly that cleans

Until I’d settle and my mom would tuck me in

As if I needed help lying under blankets,

Validation that I was doing it right and

That everything was the way everything should be

She’d kiss me on the forehead and I remember it being one drop

More wet than I wished it were

I’d feel the imprint of her lips there for hours

Unless I gave it a modest dab with my slippery sheets,

A valley that remembers a flood on a forehead

Tickles enough to keep my eyes open

Yet when I’d wake up my forehead would feel

More dry than I wished it were

My mom would stick her eyes to me as she started to crack the door

And then I’d tell her that it felt like something was missing

And her eyebrows would dance a gentle dance that said

“I care and I worry and yet I’m tired and confused”

She’d ask me what I meant and I’d say I didn’t know

And it became a game of chess that neither of us knew how to start or play or finish

And just the other day I said to my boyfriend as we got in bed

That I felt like something was missing

Though everything is where and who and when and how it’s supposed to be

We’d have spaghetti and meatballs for dinner

I’d be expecting my mom to serve me five

But she’d say, “Start with four”

There was nothing more lonely and unsettling than the phantom space

Of the could-be-fifth meatball on my plate

And then the four I had tasted not quite right

Nights like those I’d climb into sleep as if pulling on a sweater

When a ring would snag and pull loose one thread

And I’d follow the feeling of something missing

Until the ring would let go and give up and so would my mom and so would I

Until my forehead valley of spit would dry