A Week of Babysitting

A Week of Babysitting

A Week of Babysitting

“You’re purple today,”

the girl says. Her unicorn leggings

are splashed with stray acrylics,

brush cup water

stained green.

She glides lilac paint over a face,

thick paper spanning

across her kitchen floor.

I’m rendered, circle-headed,

two dot eyes and an upturned strand smile,

bodiless legs extended.

* * *

“I do feel purple,”

I agree. Yesterday, she’d deemed

me orange. An improvement

over Monday’s gray.

Some kids take to me instantly,

like funnel cake. A special treat

during life’s frenetic carnival.

A bonus adult, no grown-ups competing,

disrupting precious playtime with dull talk

of traffic, trump, and taxes.

A very tall new friend

who will play their way

with rare enthusiasm.

* * *

Other kids, like this one

have already mastered distrust. I must

earn her solidarity, a goal to which

I consummately devote myself.

It’s cathartic, to fulfill

for a child my own youthful lack.

In my tender years, still small and dewy-eyed,

I’d have

bleached over the sitter’s face

with white—

wiped her out in my aching blizzard.

Erased her existence first,

before she wrote me off:

a bad kid, headstrong, undeserving of her

amateur attempts at affinity.

Though secretly I yearned

for tender rapport.

* * *

Caretaking is an art, I do not dabble.

I’m practiced, single-minded in my focus

on sensing a child’s emotional needs,

and filling those holes before

they become cavernous.

She’s young enough, our interactions can mold

the geologic force

of her mind’s landscape.

It’s a profound responsibility,

well beyond tending to safety and meals.

Will a week with a sympathetic adult—

not obligated to care by familial bonds—

prevent her from growing into,

like me,

a head with no core, limbs reaching?

* * *

It’s worthwhile to try.

So I will be purple today and, by Friday,

by extending to her

my unfaltering goodwill,

she will color me her favorite:

a peacock teal

cool as a calm clear lake

where she does not fear

to dip her toes.