Nocturne by Sarah Ann Winn

Our little one runs around the sky without thought of finding a friend. Typical of only children, she does not always play well with others. We’ve thought of having a second, but the time never seemed right, and also, who would want another, having already our bright girl. We enroll her in the best school. For her afternoons, piano and ballet. Our house is full of pirouettes, and inside out tights curled like spent flower blossoms left on the stairs. She speaks all the languages of the earth. She knows how to roll her Rs. She knows every constellation. She thinks she might one day grow up to be a painter. We give her lakes full of rippling shadows and light, and all the walls she can cover. She begs us for a kitten. We give her a kitten. She calls me mother, and when I turn out the light, she buries her head in my neck. Her sleeplessness worries us. We have asked for tests to cover a range of childhood ailments. We could not bear to lose her.

Sarah Ann Winn lives in Manassas Virginia. Her work has appeared or will appear soon in Cider Press Review, Massachusetts Review, Nashville Review, Quarterly West, and RHINO, among others. Her hybrid piece, “Field Guide to Alma Avenue and Frew Drive” was a finalist for the Tupelo Quarterly Prose Annual contest, and it appears in their Spring 2015 issue. Her chapbook, Portage, was released by Sundress Publications in February 2015. Visit her at http://bluebirdwords.com or follow her @blueaisling on Twitter.