By Andrea Potos

After a rare no school day:
the coffeeshop, the Harry Potter matinee,
home for spaghetti and meatballs,
she hugs my waist to tell me
she loves the mother/daughter day,
words I hold, like the piece of her first haircut,
snipped coils of auburn light inside my dresser,
beside the two kindergarten teeth I smuggled
from the tooth fairy one night.

I'll stash them against the thunder
everyone claims is coming -- five or six years
from here when she'll look at me as if I'm from
Mars or some errant moon, tearing herself apart
from me like the perforated edges of the Madeline
paper dolls she and I once dressed and undressed
before tucking them in their toyroom beds.

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