When you cry
through two
floors so that I still hear the panic
thick
in your throat,
Mommy, there’s a bath in the basement,
I hurry to you with towels for the flood
but find instead

opening the door between our
world and yours,
a shadow
hovering above the steps. I
seal you together with a thud, without thought,

despite your I want out.
Now! But I direct
you to the side door where you can leave without
exposing the rest of us
to harm. Perhaps
your bat will follow.

I don’t like you, Mommy, you said yesterday
for maybe the tenth time this week.
I need my notebook,
left downstairs, but you bar the way. Today
no password I can say
will move you. So I plead.

You don’t need
it. Because you don’t work—
you slap my back—
you only write useless poems. You shove
me with the book, and I leave
without reply this time though sometimes I ask

why did the bat
choose us at all?
Why does love so easily fail?