Pit Stops for Weary Hearts

Read to your daughter
from the book of counted kisses,
one poem for each pink-pebble toe,
soft lips on the knuckles
of clenched baby fists.
Lips pressed, closed tight
against raging fevers,
against tearstained cheeks,
against goldfish funerals.

Remember the early chapters
when kisses were new,
yourself against a chill mirror,
the clammy back of your hand,
the cotton give of a pillow.
The gifts of young love
surprising the back of your knee,
your nape below a chignon,
sizzling the nerves
in the palm of your hand
in the dark of the theater
on a Sunday afternoon.

Pages dog-eared with memory:
the kiss from your father,
a brusque bearded brush
against your unguarded temple,
the one on your unfettered hand
in your hospital bed.
The woman whose vowel-laden name
dances just out of memory’s reach,
skin glowing as she bussed
your blushing cheek
with French elegance,
a whisper of lips against down.

Colleen S. Harris is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee whose books of poetry include God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark, 2009), These Terrible Sacraments (Bellowing Ark, 2010; re-released by Doubleback Books, 2019), and The Kentucky Vein (Punkin House, 2011), and she co-edited Women Versed in Myth: Essays on Modern Women Poets (McFarland, 2016). Her poetry has appeared in Main Street Rag, Free Verse, Appalachian Heritage, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, 66: The Journal of Sonnet Studies, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among others.