I Leave Her Weeping

I leave her weeping in her barred little bed, her warm hand clutching at my hand, but she doesn’t want a kiss, or to hug the dog goodnight— she keeps crying mommy, uhhh, mommy, with her lovely crumpled face like a golden piece of paper I am throwing away. We have been playing for hours, and now we need to stop, and she does not want to. She is counting on me to lower the boom that is her heavy body, and settle her down. I rub her ribcage, I arrange the blankets around her hips. Downstairs are lethal phonecalls I have to answer. Friends dying, I need to call. My daughter may be weeping all my tears, I only know that even this young and lying on her side, her head uplifted like a cupped tulip, sometimes she needs to cry.