Saturday Poetry: The Box Step

Having spent years with her body

(loved more than my own)

my beautiful daughter is a thing I know.

A daughter soon to be my height.

Gone beyond my cervix

(that tough and ugly organ

who almost stopped her flight).

My hands read her tender soles.

She is limbs elongated

poised for womanhood.

Buttocks unselfconscious

beckon man and beast alike.

I walk her ribs at night.

My solicitous fingers find the nipples

grown last summer

protrusions that foreshadow blood,

the fights.

I'm in her way now.

But not for long.

Still my little girl, this night.

The one who tells me

that next year is the prom.

A prom?  I think of her beauty so new.

Of its rocks and shoals of attraction.

I turn off the iron, collapse the board.

The turntable offers La Divine.

My sturdy left hand cups the small

of her swayback.

Come, and she follows my right

as it wafts upward.

Her butterflied fingers alight my shoulder.

I kiss her forehead and take the lead.

She looks down at our feet.

We don't breathe.

Somehow knowing, she steps back on her right.

Together, I whisper.

Step?

Yes.  Then close.

Together.  We sigh.

Step.  Close.

She nods understanding

her hand on my shoulder, squeezing

in answer to commanding feet.

I kiss her cheek.

We box step

suffused with longing.

Pretend, I tell her, that I am the Boy.

The first with undulating voice.

He gives you a kiss

and betrays your symmetry.

He will.  I know this.

She looks at me and sees that

we have made boxes.

Two small boxes.

We step together

at this moment

in a way we

will never

again.

Step close.