Saturday Morning Flannel Sheets
Saturday Morning Flannel Sheets
Because I say the exact wrong thing
my daughter sobs: I don’t want to
grow up. I don’t want you
to die. I don’t want to die.
She’s five.
Her tongue jimmies her first
tooth loose from its warm
bottom gum. This necessary
severing can’t come without
a little wriggle and push,
a little blood. I snuggle my girl
knowing this is memory
we are tooling.
Let it nestle.
I tell her someday she won’t want this—
to cuddle with me under warm flannel
on a chilly Saturday morning.
It’s the exact wrong thing,
but it’s the tug we remember—
her tears, like loose milk teeth,
like my own necessary blood,
like someday her own.
Amy Lee Heinlen is a poet and publisher based in Western Pennsylvania. She’s the author of the chapbook, All Else Falls to Shadow (Dancing Girl Press). You can read her poems in Literary Mama, Stirring: A Literary Collective, Rogue Agent, MER, and elsewhere. Awards include an Academy of American Poets University and College prize and Best Thesis in Poetry prize from Chatham University. Heinlen is co-founder and editor of Lefty Blondie Press, an independent publisher of handbound chapbooks and handset letterpress prints promoting the poetry of self-identifying women and non-binary poets. Visit her at amyleeheinlen.com
