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.