Portside

Of course you don’t tell him, and he’s young enough,

he won’t know. So you laugh a little louder 

when he slurps his spaghetti at dinner, and let him 

dawdle putting away his trains. You trace the fine 

blend of flesh and muscle of his ears as the washcloth

slides behind them in the bathtub. You wrap him 

in his rocket ship towel, his pink child smell too sweet

to bear, and want to hold him there, grounded 

to this spot, forever. He lets you sing him 

the lullaby that sometimes he says is too sad, 

and you wonder what sad means to him. Your voice breaks

at “don’t be afraid” because the fear that is baked 

into being a parent clogs your throat. When he asks 

for a train song, you make one up about a distant whistle 

and watch his face ease into dreams

tucked safely in the caboose. You can’t call this leaden

mass that is your body grief−-that belongs to those 

whose bathtubs are empty tonight, whose towels 

hang dry and useless on their hooks.

Joanne Durham is a retired educator living in the swing state of North Carolina, where laughter is an important part of keeping up the fight. She is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022), and the chapbook, On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books 2023). Her poems appear in Poetry South, Vox Populi, Writers Resist, The Inflectionist Review and many other journals and anthologies.