For One Bright Bounding Ball

ONE BRIGHT BOUNDING BALL OF A YEAR Climbing piles of warm clothes, freshly folded from the drier, you pose, triumphantly smiling, beneath the soft glow of a lamp… its dimmed halogen amber. Toys, tumble from your hand in a jumble of color, your face, red like the flames of your hair, encircles the deep blue pools of your eyes, transfixed upon A hanging chandelier, that lit and turning like the cosmos, fills the scope of your eyes, scanning the perimeter of it’s prismatic light. For nearly one Bright bounding ball of a year, you have rolled, tumbled, stumbled and crawled into each newfound corner of our lives. Now, wrapped in a warm towel, your skin, soft And pliable from talcum powder, I thumb the dough of your face, into a smile, cheeks rising like flour from a baker’s window. And now, pleasurably fatigued, from the throb and pang of your eyeteeth hammering through, I stay up later, in the dark, rocking you to sleep, knowing we will never quite be this intimate again.