Hearing your heart beat
Quick, definite, determined
Inside of me
The first time
I knew instantly
That you would be
My moon child,
My daughter
For your room
I bought
A fairy
Lounging on a
Crescent moon
You came
At night—
Moon,
On its way
To full
When you began
To speak,
“Circle!”
You pointed at its
Silvery splendor
Later:
“Where did moon go?”
Or
“Mommy, the moon!”
In daylight,
Paradoxical,
Standing equal
With the sun
As I know
You will
Recently,
You ate the lovely Luna,
Pronouncing it, “Yummy.”
“A piece, mommy?”
You offered.
And it was delicious.
“I can’t reach it,”
You said.
“You will someday.”
Now I seek this
Celestial body,
Follow its cycle
From fingernail to full
For you,
My new moon fairy.
My life before,
A lunar eclipse
Now, always
A harvest moon
Having you,
I did not know
Would also mean
Bringing back
Its wonder.
Janine Harrison, nonfictionist and poet, instructs creative writing and is advisor to First Friday Wordsmiths, a student organization, at Purdue University Calumet. She rewrote Don’t Let the Accent Fool You, memoir of Oil Express Founder Arthur Lukowski and is anthologized in We’ll Always Have Chicago and Reading Angel; her work has also appeared in Skylark. Janine is former vice president and a founding member of the not-for-profit organization, Indiana Writers’ Consortium, designed to unite, network, inspire and support Indiana’s creative writers. She seeks a blissful marriage between writing and teaching. Being mother to daughter, Jianna Sol, however, is her finest role.