Drawing in Cursive

When I peak through the door she's hunched over a book

Her gaze does not drift from left to right

it lingers

because she's drawing in cursive

---

I remember when I'd learned to write an 'E'

"Can I write it like this?" I asked her, slashing more lines

She held in a laugh, "No my sweet, it's just with three"

One, two, three.

---

She's switched her pen three times by now

"Just choose one"

She startles because I'm silent like snowdrops

my feather feet cold on the floor

"Back to bed" she waggles a finger dripping in ink

---

The morning comes and she's smiling bright

"Look what I made you"

if her pride allowed it

But she passes the book, as if she found it

A gift from Elves who visit Cobblers

And more than three, I see the colours

They rolled from her fingertips

turning paper to trees

Animating the page with shocks of electric energy

---

I learned in class

"World was created in seven"

But for her it took one

The paper world grew to the waxing of the moon, and it first appeared in silver,

It reads stories of girls, rambunctious like me

and elves weaving dresses from nothing but leaves

---

The story's not done

because she didn't take seven

and when I write in cursive, it's only with black -

because I can't tell the story with the love of a mother

I try borrowed favourites,

A singing rock with an itch on it's back

A giant claw reaching over a chasm

A girl running through brambles swept to the limbs of a hunched over tree. It sings her a song, "rest now my sweet".

---

The girl she raised can't turn paper to trees

But she'll tell a story to whoever's listening

When her brothers butterfly lashes flutter to the lilt

and a friends heavy breathing slows to a fable

the world is not dust or work or sleep but it's peering through a kaleidoscope

it's made from origami