Two is pajama-on mornings
When you whisper 
From your favourite library nook
“Daddy, read book”
And in the quiet of the sleeping sun
We hear every story being flung 
Across your bedroom floor

Now an ocean of wonder
We dive into your world
With the great heffalumps 
Who ride unicorn tales
Alongside the tiniest snails
Who sit on thrones
Watching dinosaurs roam
As our imaginations unfold

We draw these stories onto our hearts
The half-broken crayons 
Help tear our apprehensions
And inhibitions apart

We colour your art book 
With lines that leave pages
So we will remember
Always recall
That when the adventures run out
When our worlds become small 
It was in these pajama-on mornings
That you and us
We had it all

Two is a bustling change table  
More nappies than nights
One, two, three, five 
We change them all 
With half-asleep delight
You’re all tummy and toes
When you wake from your sleep
When we kiss
Your puffed-up, slept-in cheeks
You command us to take your hands
Desperate for us
To understand 
That we must play more games 

And while the rules of play 
May change from day to day
Your eyes always stay the same
Two black spheres of forever
Bright like the sun
Looking at us
As if we were the Ones
The original Creators of fun

Here’s where time vanishes
Into your creases 
Where space is lost
Inside your curls
Here’s where each bottom wipe
Causes heaven’s secrets to unfurl

And when you say
“Funny mummy”
We say, who knew
That changing you
That wiping away your wees and your poos
Would part the clouds 
And return us to ourselves 

Two is a sticky, mucky breaky
All gluggy and yucky
More strawberries and kiwi
Some bananas?
“Yes please!”
You chew and we chat
Of this and of that
Both of us enamoured  
By the words that pour
Proud and fast
From your Weetbix-stained jaws

And then, after breaky
The pajamas come off
Eventually, they must come off
And make way for clothes
For shoes covering toes
For feet that walk 
Firm and sound on the ground
To the car
To the day
Towards the man 
Who we hope 
Will someday say

When I was two
Mummy and daddy 
Read book after book after book
In my favourite library nook
They met me in my world
Where I never felt rushed or reserved 
All my far-away stories
Would thrive in the glory 
Of an uninhibited mind

Mum and dad
They never left me behind
To draw circles and lines 
On my own
Instead
They drew fantastical creatures
With lifelike features
So the pages looked boundless 
And the floor felt groundless
On those pajama-on mornings 

When I was two
Their touch 
Was cotton wool for the soul
Every tickle, cuddle and body roll
On that change table
Grew a man who now stands tall
With solid skin
That’s managed to stay elastic 
And celebrates being lived in
I’m sure I filled those nappies
To get kisses from mummy and daddy
To watch in their eyes
How our love would collide
Every time I did a poo

Pajama-on mornings
Were puzzle mania and play
An expansion of space, time, and suns
A daily lightning bolt of fun
That can never be undone
In the man I’ve become 

It’s where poetry began
To write in me
And in my memory
Of those mornings
Of the days that have spun into an age
I’ll be forever two

I’m a man for a meandering breaky
Meals should never be rushed
Conversations will never be hushed
Because of you
Mum and dad 
Who were always glad 
To top up my bowl
Even though their days
Were unravelling in places to be
They stood still for me
So I could savour my fruit
And damn, breaky never tasted so good
As it did on pajama-on mornings

But the bib came off
And I no longer needed a cloth
To wipe the mess away

And to this day
I’ll never agree when they say 
That we don’t remember
That we cannot recall 
Our two-year-old selves
Their memories too small 
Because I can remember
And I can recall
Our pajama-on mornings
When you two
Gave me your all

I wish you well
at the end of it all

Even though
we never got to speak
at the turn of the sun
after the battle was fought
after neither won

Because I was too weak
to tell you I’m sorry
I couldn’t remove
the armour of pride
that would have clarified
how all my worries about you
were really about me

And now you’re a ghost
You’ve flown away
with the eagles and my dreams
of what could have been
had I said I’m sorry

All that’s perfect is in you
In the Wednesday clouds you see
Who have nothing in particular to say
While you drink your honey tea
Alone in your room
You have a million and no place to be
You’re as needed as you are needy

Leave me be
But tell me I’m perfect
Like the rest of them

You don’t know how to be the rest of them
Neither do they
Your tea and Wednesday clouds
Were always the same as their Tuesday tears
Which are as perfect as you

It’s carnage outside
The streets are all backed up
With cars and excuses
For why we lost grip
Of who we wanted to be
Why instead we became
A cacophony
Of noise and engines
Rearing to go
Tearing through streets
At break-neck speed
When we should have moved slow

Caught our breath
We should have watched our chests
Rise and fall
To the sound
Of what this means to us all
Then we wouldn’t be spent
By our own discontent
Or the barrage of complaints
For why we didn’t make it

Fast is not best
We know this now
It’s time to rest
The motor’s out

Let me give you the view
Of the trees from below
So that you might watch
Their branches blow
Not worrying that the leaves might fall
Or that the trees might one day
Not be there at all

Let us press our faces
Firm to the ground
Where giraffes and lions
And fables abound
A jungle of innocence all around
So that you might not know
That the hurt and the haunted
Will eventually roam
Or that you might come to decipher
A roar from a groan

Let us walk and walk
Like we’ve no place to be
So that you might choose the path
Only a child can see
Not shy of his freedom
Or the possibility
That yours is whatever you want it to be

Let me give you the voice
Of a man you accept
Let my words be love
Floating over your bed
So that you might never come to regret
Who you became
Not wondering if you were ever heard
Or if what you said was too absurd
For the ears of the world
To hear

Let us cuddle like bears
Tucked away from the winds
Snug in the shelter we built from within
So that you might be brave
Where I have not been
Never worried that others
Could ever break in
To our shared heart

I’ll meet you in the moonlight
Where I’m no longer scared
Of what might be tomorrow
Of who might not be there

Our fears will fall with sundown
As time becomes a friend
A chance to remake futures
A chance to stop the end

We’ll speak of happy memories
As if they were alive
We’ll pull them from the shadows
We’ll tell them not to hide

In the moonlight you are here
And we are friends once more
Bad words have passed through darkness
Bad blood washed to the floor

In the moonlight we are kind
Together, something brave
We can change the course of stars
We can change the road to graves
In the moonlight,
We are possible.

You’re still a mother
A damn fine Gaia
Even when the crown you made
Didn’t fit his head
Even with legs buried in the bed
While another gave him life instead
Of you

And you didn’t fail
Because he didn’t latch the Godly way
Because you chose not to read a book day
On the complex physics of milk

And when you watched
Your blood-stained pants
Spell out the words, “You can’t keep going”
You fed
Again and again
Knowing –
There’s still a mother in you

And you didn’t commit some heinous crime
By not shifting all of time
To meet schedules that steal days and minds
Because for just a minute
You needed you

And when he didn’t sleep
You didn’t miss the memo
With its zany workaround
That trending hack –
It won’t be found
You cannot bend a young man’s will

You’re not heartless
In the mess that is your heart
When you wept for moons on end
In the dark
Longing for what’s been and gone
Searching for your spark

You get it
You sold yourself to motherhood
A harsh exchange
That yields a mighty prize
And demands you wear your sacrifice with pride

You’re still a mother
You always were
He sees Her
In every cuddle and coochy-coo
He sees the immense Gaia
That is the whole of you

From your tiny kingdom
You’ll soon be hurled into the world
And like the bravest king you are
You’ll have to say adieu
To all the cosmic dreams
That held and grew you

It’ll crush your tiny mind
When you’re told to leave behind
The tallest, warmest walls
That have been your safest home
Because we suddenly declared
It’s time for tiny feet to roam

It’s a lot to ask
We know
To touch cold air
That moves in strange directions
That smells of sweat and screams
At first, too much to bare
For little souls like you

But your cries
They’ll soon concede
We’re worth climbing from oblivion
To this dangerous, divine meridian
Where all the truths – hard and soft
Become risky and unhidden

You’ll come to relish days and nights
You’ll welcome in the noise and doubt
You’ll want to hang about
With us – the earth-side crowd
We’ve been waiting, waiting for you

Can you now see?
The incomparability
Of being held in earth’s first arms
So much lovelier than the womb
That you, our tiny king of earth
Can fathom why we made you
And now you want to hold us too

I saved a spot for you
in the last of my hearts

I’ve tucked you away from nostalgia –
from memory’s mighty hands
that slap you to remember
all the lost years
and wasted tears
that could have been spared
by holding you

But how can we know
that it only takes one word
to knock the other off course
By which time we’ve unravelled
at the kitchen sink –
the place we’d never think
would mark the end, again

When did we make it okay
for love to misalign?
Crashing in and out of ourselves,
for partners and epochs
that could have been spent
curled up in a future
imagined with you

We say this is it
We are all there is
And we slide our misgivings
into pockets that protect
false affections and wicked agendas
Leading so many to surrender
to the wrong other

They’ve all taken up too much space
in my sunken hearts
I wish I’d known
a long time ago
that you’d been so close
poised and ready – just out of sight
Standing at the edge of defeat,
waiting to tell me that you loved me

It surprises me too
that I had one more spot
in the last of my hearts –
saved for you
Maybe for all the missteps we take in love,
we all do

It’s another busy Monday
Or so my Outlook says
Cause it hasn’t clocked the court case
Calling me upstairs

Above the meeting madness
I left torpedoing downstairs
The judge is hearing evidence
The jury sits prepared

Black gowns sweep the floorboards
Dark-oaked and clocked
In years of withheld judgment
It’s time to pledge my oath

They’re demanding truth from me
But I say – they don’t get it
By now it’s too far buried
Beneath my long-gone wreath
And whatever they said I could be
Is forgotten

Or is it?

“She never wanted emails
The ones that find you well
She objects to dreams
That live to serve
Her empty clientele”

My Defence – my precious fortune
He sees what I’ve become
And still defends a future
Where my crimes can be undone

And by his words
That carry faith
That don’t belong in court
I see how fast I got dislodged
By lies now so well wrought

Perhaps I could get ready
To admit that I was wrong?

Wrong to dress in clothes I loathed
Wrong to sell the junk I sold
Wrong to fear that being bold
Would cause me to unfold
If I ever dared to close my Outlook

By now the jury rumbles
All propped up in their chairs
“This girl – she’s getting serious”
“This fraud has shown she cares”

“It’s done,” the judge declares
“You’ve started the repairs”
And by virtue of his verdict
I’m sent swiftly back downstairs

Back down here, I want to know –

Can a hint of truth be enough
To fight the mis-intention
Of monied greed that swallows up
Our hard-earned self-connection?

With no court to test my honour
No Defence to save my name
The meetings might just kill me
But I’ll no longer take the blame
So I’ll keep trying all the same
To close my God Damn Outlook