10 Minutes or Less

You are downstairs with Daddy. I can hear the train whistle and smell the smoke, your squeals echo above the clicking of the wheels over the tracks. I am forgetting to write everything down.

Last night we put you down to bed and a few minutes later you began to shriek. High pitched, venomous shrieks. We went in and found that you had rolled over in your crib for the very first time, back to front, and you were terrified.

Now that it's warmer, we don't zip you into your sleep sacks for sleeping. Now, when I lay you down you push your head to the right, upward, as though you were trying to gaze behind you, your whole body twisted on its side, nose up to catch a dream scent, hands clasped together in a slumber prayer. Your little body arched that way, every night a tiny bow.

Grandma takes you to see the rooster. Later, you make sounds like crowing.

Today the clouds were moving quickly. It rained in the morning and then the wind swept the clouds away. You ate peas and bananas and pears and mangoes for dinner. In the middle of eating, you often turn your head to the side and watch the branches swaying outside the window. While you watch, you open your mouth without looking at me. You watch and go on eating.

I took you to a conference in Denver. You slept in a closet in the Hyatt hotel room beneath the safe, beside the ironing board. Instead of going out for drinks with friends (too exhausted) I watched hyenas devour a lion on television. Later, meerkats and elephants.

We have taken the cellophane down from the windows. In the early evening, we leave the front door open and long shadows and rays of sunshine fall across the carpet. You pull pages from Newsweek and Atlantic Monthly and attempt to devour them. We dress Luxy in your sun hats, stroke your soft head, kiss you just behind your earlobe, just below your hairline, at the place where your neck is softest.