We’re bickering en route   
to breakfast when our son,  
in his rear-facing car seat, 
says What’s dis? His finger traces 
the moon. Though he knows what we call  
moon, he asks the names of thin discs  
in daytime skies or swollen night-moons  
that house endless scrolls of signs. 
To him, to really see something  
is to lift the veil from its face, 
see how it’s changed, 
then uncover its name.  
Moon. He stretches the o’s  
when he says it, lands on n  
like a feather’s footstep. 
Our sun is less  
than two but greater 
than a galaxy, and I think  
the harder I love him 
the less hurt stashed  
in my bones. 
He knows how to bring  
us back to moments  
that mingle with possibility, 
before we are certain we know  
the names for anything. 
Sometimes the space  
before the doorway of anger  
is small, and hangs there, 
a heavy hand on a doorknob 
before turning.  
My son ushers us through  
a door where the moon  
is a scoop of ice cream.  
I start laughing,  
then we all ha ha ho ho  
and he he he, riding that tune 
all the way to breakfast. 
Later, when bickering returns 
our son will use laughter 
to bring us back.     


  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sara Ries Dziekonski holds an MFA in poetry from Chatham University. Her first book, Come In, We’re Open, won the 2009 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition. Her chapbooks include Snow Angels on the Living Room Floor (Finishing Line Press 2018) and Marrying Maracuyá (Main Street Rag 2021), which won the Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Competition. Her poems have appeared in American Life in Poetry, Slipstream, LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Cordella Magazine, 2River View, Earth’s Daughters, Thimble Literary Magazine, Waterwheel Review, SWWIM Every Day, among others. She is the co-founder of Poetry Midwives Editing Services and teaches creative writing with Keep St. Pete Lit.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ann Calandro is a writer, artist, and classical piano student. Her short stories have been accepted by The Vincent Brothers Review, Gargoyle, Lit Camp, The Fabulist, The Plentitudes, and other literary journals. Duck Lake Books published her poetry chapbook in 2020. Calandro’s artwork appeared in juried exhibits and in Mayday, Nunum, Bracken, Zoetic Press, Mud Season Review, Stoneboat, and other journals. Shanti Arts published three children’s books that she wrote and illustrated. See more at www.anncalandro.webs.com. Submitted piece is a mixed media collage.