I am dreaming of time,
of simplicity and nursery rhymes.
Time is my storybook
like Peter Pan or Cinderella,
where innocence lives forever
and love and life are of happily ever after.

I talk to time,
a story not long too tell.
It sits at my bedside and holds my hand,
not as a lover,
but as a parent helping me cross the street to play on the monkey bars.
Time holds my hand like a playmate,
like a friend in Red Rover.
We are the children,
asking time to come over.

God is the stuffed animal that sits on my bed.
He does nothing,
says nothing.
If a man broke into my house, he wouldn't protect me.
He would do nothing,
say nothing,
watching all the while,
fluffy and silent.

Madeleine,
you are just a child.
You don't know your father's first name or your mother's sins.
You know the flowers and the syrup on your pancakes.
I see bliss in your brown eyes that blossom in the Springtime.
They should name a flower after you,
after your purple dress,
Madeleine.

You're so scared of the dark,
of all the things that don't exist in your closet.
Your shoes your dolls your fear.
You climb out of your bed and seek comfort in your parents' arms.
Your tiptoe doesn't even echo in the hallway.
Will their door be locked?

Knock knock.

I think of my grandma,
almost ninety-five,
watching the news in her house alone.
It's silly
to hope that another man might sweep Viola off her feet
like Clarence did when she was just eighteen.
When he died, she stayed
praying her rosary so that it might rain down on her flowers
and her garden that she tended to her entire life,
just like her children, and their children, and their children.

I visit her,
hoping she might live for another twenty years,
praying that life will go on, and if that fails,
that it might be buried
with flowers;
That it might rain.

We rode the bullet,
the sun and wind in our faces,
the Saturday afternoon
chasing behind us.
Strapped in for the ride,
my face in your shoulder,
it felt like only two seconds
before the thrill was over.

We watched together as it brought us up high,
overlooking the gulf
and the boats sailing by.
Murky water below us,
asking us to take a swim,
or maybe just long enough to dip our toes in.

And I didn't plan to talk about love
or the future
or marriage
or the kids we will never have.
I want to hold you at the boardwalk in Kemah
for the last moments of the bullet,
the second they take our picture.
Laughing.
*Terrified.