Treehouse

Rachael Lynn Nevins

Before the baby was even a baby, when night and day he was just
a kick and a kick and a kick to the gut,
I dreamed about my boy, and in his belly he had
a wide-open mouth full of teeth.
I reached to pick him up, and he bit my finger
so hard I feel it even now. I remember no other dreams
from that time, and there have been no more dreams
since the baby was born, and the baby
is no longer a baby, though still in our bed, still
suckling, every night a milky blur, and every morning a surprise,
my son running the wheels of his plastic tractor
up and down my cheek. No dreams until the dream
I had last night, of an auditorium filled with cakes.
I used to dream of flight, travel, and finding hidden doorways, and now
all I have are these tables laden with cakes:
white cakes, chocolate cakes, carrot cakes,
cakes with nuts, with strawberries, with buttercream frosting,
cream cheese frosting, icing, glazes, ganache; friends
I haven’t seen in months standing at the tables, filling themselves
with my cakes, their crumbs falling to the floor….

Rachael Lynn Nevins is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. She teaches Level II fiction and poetry writing with the Writers Studio and has work published or forthcoming in Rattle, Mom Egg Review, and Literary Mama. She blogs about her days as a writerly work-at-home mom at The Variegated Life and about her reading at Commonplace.

Also check out Rachael’s poem And Then Comes January.

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