11.7.24

This is not a poetry substack now or maybe it is I don't know.

11/7/24

The small things stay the same:
the curl coming in to your hair, my ability to make a perfect piece of cinnamon sugar 	toast.
There is still the sliver of moon in the sky and
the things coffee does in the mornings
when you need it most. 

How then
is everything else 




everything else?

My tiny artist loves drawing
but only things that already exist:
our family, my bangs, her sister’s perfect pigtails, her father’s beard. 
She copies pictures
from storybooks
follows steps to draw a
cat
an otter
a house. 

It is too much to ask—
she is so
young
so 
fresh in her making sense of the world
— but I need her 
soon
to learn to draw things that aren’t already 
here

things
we can’t imagine
futures we don’t yet know how to build
countries that don’t already
exist. 

Yes, sure, draw the tiny beauties we have here already:
Degas’ ballerinas and 
Halloween decorations 
that sliver of moon
that desperate mug of morning coffee

But 
after you have copied the great works of art 
into your little notebook,
after you have drawn and redrawn our family— our legs too long, our lips so pouty our 
lashes
exuberant
then please 
draw 
what comes next

draw it in
crayons
in stubby pencils 
in the same markers
your sister keeps drawing on our walls with. 

draw it
if you must
with the VOTE pen
we got at the booth
that I can no longer
look at. 

I need to see something
that isn’t already here,
something I don’t yet 
know
something I haven’t
already
imagined.