Do it. The child you were needs it.  
Wake up late and stay in bed, turning 
the sheets like strata, like waves  

lazing over your lazy thighs. Don’t  
bother with the to-dos or must-bes 
and just shimmer. Get up and brew 

the coffee you always thought would  
be so good, but tastes bitter, and add 
cream, maple syrup, tip in just a bit 

of whisky, and say “fuck this day.” 
There are things you have to do.  
Don’t do them. Sit and draw a horse.   

Don’t exercise. Play. Eat ice cream  
and arrange your stuffed animals 
in a circle. Serve them tea. Make sure yours  

is sweet. Have that conversation with them 
you’ve been meaning to have: where you 
apologize for how you’ve abandoned them,  

and let them love you as only things you’ve 
imagined loving you can. Your toys are not 
toys. They are limbs of emotion, like people, and if  

you leave them alone too long, it takes a while  
for it not to feel silly as you talk with them  
again. Shame is the enemy of curiosity.  

If you listen, really listen, their voices come back.  
They start to tell you about places you’ve  
never been, about things you want with  

a ferocity that scares you sometimes. They make 
sense. Sit with them on the couch and watch 
a movie you know is bad. Laugh all you want,  

but if you don’t let yourself love how silly 
it is, that you have spent all this time on  
groceries and appointments and meetings 

and neating up, you need to recall you have plenty  
of time to scrub and launder, to make this farce 
you don’t even enjoy look real. Look at their glass  

eyes, and see what’s reflected. Convexity  
makes for a broader vision: not the small thing you  
are, but the immensity of what you could be.     

Oh, my sweet self, oh, my sweet other, won’t you leave  
this day? It won’t love you like I love you: it only wants 
that you do. I don’t want anything but you.   

Kate Polak is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work has recently appeared in Plainsongs, McSweeney’s, So to Speak, Barzakh, The Closed Eye Open, Inverted Syntax, and elsewhere. She lives in south Florida and aspires to a swamp hermitage.