Hope Is The Thing With Teeth

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Debbie Campbell

My toddler eats Cheez-Its

like they’re going out of style,

like they’re the world’s next shortage,

right after toilet paper.

If you were on a hunt for my daughter,

you’d simply follow the crumbs.

In the early morning,

my toddler talks to herself,

whole conversations, philosophical ramblings,

laughter, and something not unlike

the escalating whispers of my childhood,

my sister and me

in the early morning light.

Some days, these days,

I feign sleep to listen.

I pay acute attention to every squeak,

every vowel, every elongated “o”—

we’re Midwestern, after all—

every clack of her teeth meeting,

her tongue clicking.

I search for meaning in this small,

brilliant world of words she’s created,

each morning new, each morning

just as chattery as the last.

My husband and I watched a show

on a cool night in Italy,

our feet too sore for more adventuring,

our stomachs too full for more gelato.

In it, a young couple buys a home

to discover an entire world

living in their old icebox.

They watch the rise and fall

of the dinosaurs,

cavemen, business men,

and women,

poets, teachers, astronauts,

a future world ours has

only begun to imagine

in the pages of science fiction.

In the early morning,

I imagine the rise and fall

of civilizations built on

toddler phonetics.

I imagine the dinosaurs

of her invented world,

the flora and fauna,

the people, and the future

our world has only begun to imagine

in the pages of science fiction

—all of this life existing

between a small,

brilliant set of teeth,

for babbling, philosophizing, inventing,

and Cheez-It eating.

Some days, these days,

the future seems especially uncertain.

The Italy we visited three months ago

doesn’t look like the same Italy.

The routines we’ve spent our adult lives building

have begun the fall after the rise.

But there’s hope in new beginnings,

like new mornings and new words,

and if my daughter can invent them

new each day, imagine

the world we could re-invent together

with some imagination, some quiet,

and a strong set of teeth.

Debbie Campbell is a writer, wife, mum, and Cheez-It supplier living in the Chippewa Valley.