All five at home and me
dividing my time, this way and that
trying to love the teenager with that
same tenderness I felt when she was two

I see her now sitting cross-legged
gazing at the asian children’s saris
the only white girl in the playgroup

Now rave music blasts me from her room
too soon she’ll be leaving home,
dressed in black, with bronzed hair,
and crying for her brother

She, like me, is pulled so many ways,
ignoring one is taking notice of another,
we try to balance out the living and the dead
knowing our lives hang by a gossamer thread.