The tattoo over my daughter’s heart spells out the words of love I’ve said to her every night we’ve ever slept beneath the same roof. Loving my children is the biggest, easiest part of me.

What if you loved everyone the way you love them, Alison? 

Once in a while, for a tiny breath of time, I get a glimpse of what living in that imaginary world would feel like, and it’s overwhelming. It’s not the world I live in, but I wish it were.

Rain, New Year’s Eve, by Maggie Smith

The rain is a broken piano,
playing the same note over and over.

My five-year-old said that.
Already she knows loving the world

means loving the wobbles
you can’t shim, the creaks you can’t

oil silent—the jerry-rigged parts,
MacGyvered with twine and chewing gum.

Let me love the cold rain’s plinking.
Let me love the world the way I love

my young son, not only when
he cups my face in his sticky hands,

but when, roughhousing,
he accidentally splits my lip.

Let me love the world like a mother.
Let me be tender when it lets me down.

Let me listen to the rain’s one note
and hear a beginner’s song.