You are making a mosaic, abstract
in muted shades of moss, foam, and fog.
Clay shapes you have made and fired, affixed
to the surface you’re patterning with shattered
glass, piece by piece: slow work. Our daughter stands
on tiptoe and traces a spiral, still
smooth, red ochre, with one finger. “That’s Daddy’s,”
I tell her, and she looks up, pleased and
serious, and I think of our first glimpse
of her: the grainy sonogram, the only
clear things one white, spread-fingered hand
and the dark shape of her lips, a feminine
miniature of your mouth. Someone called it
a rosebud, and it was a bloom, a bow,
a small, imperfect boat. For months after
she began crawling, you abandoned art,
fearing glass shards and the lure of small, bright
tiles to a toddler mouthing everything.
I have seen your blood mix with the grout pressed
into jagged patterns and known why you
can’t resist touching, even in museums,
tracing stone curves or running a thumb
over ridges of thick oil, and I know
that’s part of my love for you, your bold need
to understand, your willingness to bleed.
The clay spiral under our daughter’s finger
winds space into a second curve, the way
my love for each of you cradles the other.
originally published in Ontologica
Amy Watkins is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Milk & Water, Lucky, and Wolf Daughter (coming in 2019 from Sundress Publications). She lives in Orlando with her husband and daughter and a mean-spirited ginger cat.