PROSE POETRY​

JENNIFER HARRISON​

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ALL OF US

For the first time we put her down to sleep and let her cry. Your big hands around my waist, all the hidden feminine in you trembling. I can see your eyes wanting to be the third eye, wanting to see all that we should do but will not and all that we should not do but will do. The light folds back when you open the door, the blue spills out. I have been discussing bunnies and safe zones and forgotten your kiss until it is on my mouth, warm and resonant as jazz that grows soft and complicated. These are slow hours: the time it takes to make bread from starter, the time it takes to climb another mountain we didn't know we had in us. The time it takes to find out we are not fashioning the resistance. Not sculpting bronze. She will choose her gender expression. She will float out in a pink sash, fanned skirt and ballet slippers. She is the caesura. After the show, we gather around the dripping dogwoods, wafts of cinnamon buns trailing between us, the one eye you keep like a lighthouse turning in the night, for our one precious child. 

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Jennifer Harrison holds a BA in Creative Writing. After receiving a Marian Coe Scholarship award for her poetry, and having a number of her works performed by a theater group in 2000, she has since held onto her writings and now in the last year chosen to submit them for publication. She lives in Seattle.