November #2

The World They've Created Comes To A Full Stop

The day my daughter saw

that I did not know what might live

inside a basketball,

and my impatient reply

of 'I don't know, maybe fairies'

sealed my fate.

I was no longer her goddess,

and she turned to the outside world

to see who might ascend the throne.

Friends' mothers, her grandmother, teachers

all failing that steep set of steps

sooner or later,

so Britney Spears and the Spice Girls

adorned her bedroom walls,

and she chanted nightly:

'Oops, I did it again'

while my bath water reverberated in time

to their backbeat songs.

I was never again offered the throne or sceptre,

but deity light shone upon me briefly,

when she had her first baby,

and I was the only one
who could rock him to sleep.

— Helen Patrice