Bringing You Home

Susan Fealy

You’ve stained my sleep again and your tiny clothes

tangle their arms and legs in my washing machine.

So many headless bodies

and now your wriggly purple flesh,

two white straps on a new white nappy, wet,

wet, wet, urine soaks it, and you, and me,

before I can hook your spider legs

back into their flowered net.

Dark silk clings to your skinny neck,

yet no spider ever lifted sounds like this.

Your eyes are marbles in a slow slot-machine

and there you’ve scratched your face again.

It’s time to snare those starfish hands—

but God, how to blunt such silver flecks?