The mother pricks her pen straight
into her pointed heart and out flows
child love in blue blood pouring
over the page like ink from fountain
pens in Sister Mary Peter’s class in
third grade where she learned cursive.
The children play over the page,
they hopscotch and skip rope.
One girl catches her foot on the cord
and trips, when her child comes up
to her back, “Mom, you said we could
go now, mom, you said…”

The child, she writes, saw the doctor
and he had bad news, and the parents
wept and held each other. The little one
was silent, wrapped in white blankets,
propped up on the pillow, the thick
fake eyelashes brushing cold plastic
cheeks. “Mom, you’re still not ready?”

She slips the pen back into its sheath,
and her face flushes pink with her
pulse as she runs to the door just
behind her lively child.

CC 2007 Sharon Mollerus