Interlude During My Hardest Time

Nina Bannett

Help me avoid going back
to the bedridden, hide

the looming, swaddle
my mother's deathbed,

stroke pain out of her hair.

In your twilight darkness,
my drowsy eyes open.

My sleep is a clasp.
Let me keep it for an hour.

Your child babbles,
all murmurs are babble.

My being here is babble,
the richest kindness.

You close my soft coat as I go.

published in Snapdragon Journal, Summer 2016

Nina Bannett's poetry has appeared in journals such as Open Minds Quarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, and CALYX, and online at Topology, the fem, and Silver Birch Press's blog. She is Professor of English at New York City College of Technology, City University of New York.

Interlude During My Hardest Time

Help me avoid going back to the bedridden, hide

​

the looming, swaddle my mother's deathbed,

​

stroke pain out of her hair.

​

In your twilight darkness, my drowsy eyes open.

​

My sleep is a clasp. Let me keep it for an hour.

​

Your child babbles, all murmurs are babble.

​

My being here is babble, the richest kindness.