AFTERNOON AND A LITTLE GIRL

You get up with your cheeks burning
and your face contracted with the sadness of awakening.
A three-year-old sorrow:
Sensing the sorrows that still await you.
What could have consoled you?
I go on typing with one hand,
caressing you with the other.
You aren’t thinking about me –
maybe about a sweet or a lion,
maybe about a train.
Nor am I thinking about you –
about a cold gloomy January
that would crouch between me and the screen
if you hadn’t pushed your way in here.
Now impatience starts stirring inside you.
In me too:
You keep me from writing the poem about you.

AFTERNOON AND A LITTLE GIRL