A Book For Bedtime

Your silver star disco dance glitter

Still frosted the stripped down bed

Ferguson got you excited

Keegan filled you with dread.

Your slammers left rings after midnight

on the edge of the rosewood veneer.

One eye said sorry without prompting,

the other filled up with a tear.

Your fingernail scratches my photo,

my finger and thumb set your curls.

Brushing by quickly in headlines

your small print rubs off on the world.

You double-declutched with your dancing,

tiptoed past my gearbox façade.

Now the Christmas lights are all refusing

to go back onto their slotted card.

The hand that creased over page corners

and thumbed through each volume at night.

So hard that in time you have broken their spine

and they’re afraid to come into the light.