He asks me where they live. Mothers know: they congeal in the dark hive of your mind. I don’t really explain. Whatever they are, they’re not real, yet they whisper when I close the door. He doesn’t understand death, but, like all children, he knows what it means to be alone in the dark. Alone can dive to terrifying depths.
He asks me what I’m scared of. Sharks, I lie, bees, as if fear were nothing more than stingers and teeth. Someday he will learn: you can sleep with horror in the corners of your eyelids. You can trust your breath from one day to the next, though each day could betray you. My three-year-old is scared of ghosts. I tell him what I hope is true: I’m here, and when I’m not here, I’m close.
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Melissa Braaten (she/her) has been teaching and reveling in the beauty of mathematics for many years. In between, she writes poetry about parenting and other things that cause her to lose sleep. She lives in Boston, MA.