By Alina Zollfrank
How many moons ago were
twenty-one years?
Twenty-one years ago – your face
a moon-bright planet –
your face a planet
swaddled in nightlight
you – swaddled in hospital light
on this dark planet
your first night on this planet –
the dark swaddled you
our skin swaddled you – your
moon face glowing from some
unknown source. We stared
into your wide open eyes –
wondering wide eyes stared back
through us – the moon
stared back at us – we stared
at your closed fluttering eyelids –
lashes curtaining a planet beheld
in our arms and we didn’t know
how many moons ago? that today
would
come.
We just
knew you.
___
Alina Zollfrank, a committed disability advocate, dreams trilingually in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has been nominated repeatedly for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize and recently appeared in The MacGuffin, Burningword, and Thimble. Alina has received the Washington Artist Trust Grant and the DIAJ Award.