Lullaby with Fireflies and Rising Seas
       

And if the woods carry you into their deep
and tangled. If the woods claim you

elf or sprite and spirit you
from me. Tell me your first fireflies

were enough, the lawn they candled
to enchantment. Because the dark

of childhood is mythed
and monstered, but my dark

mind glints off every surface
sharp enough to slit. Tonight,

ice sheets slide like seals
into the sea and in Nice,

parents hurl their children out
of the truck's path. Their only

prayer, a heartbeat's worth
of please. Maybe, like me,

the only god you can conceive
is a kind of wakefulness.

Feel the stream of night
tugging your ankles? See

the seams of night
torn with those brief lights?

Sometimes I ring
the fine bones of your wrist

with my forefinger and thumb
and wonder at the monstrous

love that flung you into this.
In every fairy tale, the mother dies

and is replaced by someone wicked. It's true,
I want to keep you safe, but I want

to keep you mine. I never meant to fly
you like a kite. I never meant to stay

behind. But the mother is a cottage
the daughter flutters from, the mother

more cage than bird, and the parting clean
as a licked sword. The future, a castle that can't be

child-proofed. And the fairy tale, still
open on my lap, is not a map

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Copyright © 2022 Erin Rodoni All rights reserved
from And if the Woods Carry You
Southern Indiana Review Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission