In her bubble bath tonight,
I rubbed away her morning.

Strawberry pink.

Gentle fingers, ferns
wiping away sweet summer sky.
Her day painted long
on freckled brown limbs,
grass and dew and honey bees.
She smelled of sweat, dusty earth,
rubbed into creases warm.

She opened like a monarch,
revealing cardinal’s secret song,
roly poly fall, the long lonely trek of ants,
crossing her mountain range over ankle, thigh.
I washed away the wind, dandelion puff,
both making wishes, watching as they blew away
listening to the beat of butterfly wings drumming the sky.

Heather M. Browne is a faith-based psychotherapist and recently emerged poet, published in the Orange Room, Boston Literary Review, Page & Spine, Eunoia Review, Poetry Quarterly, Red Fez, , Electric Windmill, mad swirl. MCI just published her chapbook, We Look for Magic and Feed the Hungry.