a wandering mind

My daughter in her white-washed jean dress w/ butterfly skirt says she wants to stay home from school w/ me, & my immediate thought: pull the car away from the drop-off curb w/ her still in it. Adulting, I’ve heard, is understanding our mother’s anger when we forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer. I’m not a grownup mother. I never let anything thaw. I won’t even handle raw poultry. I wanted to bring my daughter home because I’m lonely & she says the loveliest philosophical things in the way of an eight-yr-old girlchild I don’t think I’ve traumatized or injected w/ the venom of girlwounds as I was in my wired girlcoop. No backhand popping her mouth. No sick hand pulling the gauze of her butterfly skirt. I sometimes re-live through her. She takes me through dark forests, teaches me which wolves are prey. How not to be afraid.