At night she sleeps with her lips parted ever so slightly,

so I will watch the air flutter at the edge of her mouth

tipping itself in and then emptying out, bathing me

in her wonder, until the whole room must be full of her,

all the furniture carrying her peppermint breath on their shoulders.

She has tucked herself into all of my favorite spaces:

in the gap between letters in her book on the bedside table

in the threads of wool in my favorite Christmas sweater

in the cookie jar and by the crackling logs of the fireplace

where she rests behind Cat’s ears and in Dog’s belly fur.

Morning will take away her peace, but I will wait

for the sun to fall into the sky’s edge again,

for I know that when nature reacquaints itself with darkness again,

her breath will be in the lungs of the buzzing bees,

the mayflies and the mosquitoes and all their ghosts

the flocks and tired wings, the hives in tree limbs

and when her old, weary father can’t worship her anymore

having succumbed to sleep as he does, for some time,

as we all must, the humming insects will take my place

and breathe her back into the grass and the flowers,

so that she can grow forever in the shade of the oak

over her Papa’s grave.