Dusk

I caught the evening in my hands, light as cotton
candy, big as a mouse. My daughter looked
at it with wonder, and named it,
the same sort of name she gifts everything
— a word, and then that same word repeated with a y.
Tonight she fell asleep with snake-snakey, bear-beary,
and twiglight-twilighty, the last a sliver on her forehead
smaller than any mole could be, a paper cut
without broken skin. In the morning it
will have been absorbed into the new day.
Invisible, the way the past often is,
on the bodies of children.

Caitlin Thomson’s work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals including: The Penn Review, The Moth, Barrow Street, Wraparound South, and Radar Poetry. You can learn more about her writing at www.caitlinthomson.com.