Compline

In this creased picture, I am one of a half dozen
school girls in navy blue skirts and white blouses
with Peter Pan collars, whose mothers sang us to sleep
with Que sera, sera. Skin thinner than papyrus,
blotchy with hives and more restless than the others,
I pressed my forehead against the cool of windows
lashed with rain, the steady run of water from the roof,
as they coaxed bright floss through the eye of a needle
and eased squares of cloth over embroidery hoops.
Who knew how many children would pass through our
narrow hips and where they might be headed? No sign
swung from the ceiling of the sky, and when the eye-
shaped gap eased shut in the clouds, only the wind,
unstitched, came to shadow our heels at bedtime.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.