Simplicity after Complexity

by Vernie Lynn DeMille

 

Simplicity after complexity
Is 4 am. with a crying child.
Pulled from her bed,
Damp from sweat and vomit,
Clinging to your neck,
Sobbing as you soothe
The aching tummy,
The feverish head,
The tear-sore eyes.

Stepping together into a tub,
Because she screams when you try
To bathe her alone,
Until she wretches again
On your silk robe and satin slippers,
And you strip both of you bare
And sink, skin to skin
Into warm water.

It surrounds you,
It surrounds her,
As your hand brings up waves
To stroke her back, her hair,
And her cheek, the one that isn’t pillowed
On your breast.
Her crying slows into hiccups,
As little by little the smell and stickiness
Of bile is washed from her skin
Into the water that surrounds you both.

You know, as it is washing over you,
With every stroke of your hand
That washes it away from her,
That you’d carry every drop
If it could ease her pain.
She doesn’t know yet,
Not in the extremity of her discomfort,
Where all the sick, all the mess, all the need
Goes when it leaves her body, her mouth,
Her heart.

She doesn’t see how it sticks to you,
How it clings to your hair,
As you wash it from hers.
How it lodges in your heart
As you are comforting hers.
She won’t remember how you wrap her up
In your own clean sheets,
To lie by her father,
While you go to her room,
Clean her bed, make it fresh and new,
Scrubbed free of stain and smell.
She won’t hear her father say,
With a grin in his sleepy, ground gravel voice,
“You smell like baby barf, sweetheart”
When you finally make it back to bed.

She won’t understand why you cry
As you stand under the spray of the shower,
And shampoo three times to finally
Wash away the smell,
Head bowed, water streaming around you,
From deep within you,
Like a prayer and a blessing
Upon the sleepless.

But she knows your smell.
When you climb in beside her,
One hour left in the night for sleep,
And she burrows in beside you,
Arms and mouth seeking
For milk, for mother, for reassurance.

And from the complexity of your life,
The midnight messes,
The daily dirt of life that sticks to you
When you wash it away from others,
The endless weight of effort
For the benefit of another soul,
She comes to know the simplicity
Of her mother’s love,
The constancy of her devotion,
And the security of her place
In your heart and hands.

December 25, 2019