For Chloe, Sleep

by Cecilia Woloch

My mother must have loved me once the way I love this child—although
she’s not my child, this girl who is eight this summer, lovely, freckled,
pigtailed, crooked-toothed. Who reads us both to sleep, almost, then sighs
and closes the book. I breathe into her breath and rub her back as she
dozes off. Thinking: Let this life go on long after my life ends. I can face oblivion
for her, I can let my life drift into hers. The way my mother — who also
loved this child, and whose child I was —once drifted off. It’s not so awful,
after all. I hold her loosely in my arms and let each little darkness fall.