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.
