It starts with a small wet freckle
high in the atmosphere that drops
with resignation from swollen black
circles of sighs. A falling flight
under a solemn sky its soft end
a splatter on my spider hand
curled in webs of her hair. She hands
me to my crib. Her sleeve slides across the freckle
on my heel as she lifts the end
of my wool blanket and drops
it over my squirming legs. She takes flight
through the yawning void of the black
curtained doorway, leaving black
broodings clutched in my outstretched hand.
My mind, unable to perceive night’s flight
from the day, sparks a thousand freckles
of fear as the ceiling drops
towards me without end
until my breath is squeezed between the end
of my nose and the oncoming black,
choking me with crumbling drops
of drywall dust. My hands
grasp the air, feeling for freckled
starlight beyond the window. A moth’s flight
reveals the still lovely flight
of the moon through the glass at the end
of the room—that bright freckle
just out of reach amidst the heavy black
beyond the fingertips of my feeble hand.
My cry drops
like a weakened bee as it drops
through sky in flight
of an angry mother’s hand.
I can feel life’s end
in the rasp of my rattle. My black-
marked being, an immaterial freckle.
She frenzies down a flight of stairs to grab my hand,
but drops it with a hard resolve. Dripping from the end
of her black lash, one last freckle.
