Those ‘Small hours’
MUMMY, she screams,
Her voice loud, stricken, immediate,
drilling, like a trepan,
into your just begun nightmare;
stirred and shaken, you imagine
her fall down, from the bunk bed,
having hiked up sleep-walking;
an earthworm wriggle, in the folds of her blanket,
having crawled slowly from the bathroom;
her forehead, cut open and bloodied,
having struck the wall as she roiled in her nightmare;
but while your brain weighs up
the many unlikely possibilities,
her mother
is already by her side,
having navigated, in perfect certainty,
the fraught path across the living room,
it is as if her daughter’s scream gathered
the chairs, crayons and toys together,
frightening them into a heap to a side;
soon you hear a nose blow
once, twice, thrice, break, repeat;
utensils rattle in the kitchen; a toilet flush;
a reassuring conversation in the dark;
all seems well; you close your eyes,
and before you know it, nod off again
to find yourself
in a room
with Leonardo Di Caprio, watching his totem
spin, wondering if it stopped or if it didn’t,
when a space craft lands close by,
inside, Matthew McConaughey rages
at a fragile Anne Hathaway,
his friend having aged twenty one years
in the five minutes it took
your wife
to return to bed and awaken you
with a 'kick'
“I am not sending her to school today”,
which you know, after nine long years,
is a question pretending to be a statement,
so you finally do wake up,
and proceed to gently talk
her out of her perpetual worries.