The moon hangs, white and crisp, under
the rims of clouds spread like construction paper
torn and pressed flat
against this expanse of sparkling black.
The woods, too, hills, roads,
are just paper in muted greys and greens
all stuck down, glued tight to the big, flat world.
I am imagining all of it, every bit
my dream, my picture of how each thing
must be:
exactly there, exactly like that, affixed
in just the right spot
and soon my pudgy child-hand
will press down my brown square of house, my bed,
and me, under the torn paper coverlet,
my paper hair cut into a paper fringe.
There.
I am in my place
in this world, am I not?
The moon, only, is a watery eye
slipping through a tear in the paper
that lets the light leak out.
I watch it tuck itself back behind the rough-edged clouds again,
smooth and distant
and cry my paper tears.
11/30/96