Skeletal Lullaby

For all the children who held their mother’s milk
inside their cheeks and waited for it to turn into teeth

              or those who steamed it into a twilight fog
              and sat naked in the center of the kitchenette

thumb pressed against the roof of their mouths,
blinking so quickly      they wonder if they ever even woke.

And there you are,
back in your mother’s arms again:

              the yellow patchwork of the linen
              severed through with sunlight,

and the hinge of the bedroom door dressed
in a cochlea of broken shells.

              Your only rattle the sound a lozenge makes
              as it clangs against the teeth in your mother’s mouth,

singing skeletal lullaby, let me in.

There are inevitable ends we all must face.

Here are mine:
The sun is circling back.
It will reach this house by morning.
I will put my ear to my mother’s mouth and hear the ocean.
She will have had her thumb on my cheek for hours,
              absently tracing the tears I never thought
              I would cry.