Incrementally all at once
behind a shiny metal hatch, a gumball,
a clank of shut over the dark
that rolled out red to meet me.
Nonetheless, chomp, chomp,
I am loved, a penny given, spent.
Or a spell forever cast
backward over yellow-billed
ducks, white-feathered bellies
full of sale-bin Wonder Bread;
the lost-again look my mother sent up
tidy rows of hospital windows
staring square-eyed into pond green;
the polka-dotted bag I wound
around her wrist to make her
bandage look pretty.