Amelia
As we lay in the sun,
your little head, exhausted, on my chest
with your short curly hair that made you look
simultaneously like an old lady and a baby
it was strange to know you wouldn't remember this.
I wanted to save you from what was about to happen to you
which was nothing but time, but time is bad enough.
Next year, you would still be little,
but I would feel so much older.
Little Amelia,
are your parents as charmed by you as I was?
Will you one day ask to be called Amy instead?
Will your brother who hugged you so freely this summer
turn red at the thought of his friends seeing it next year?
These things, I might never know.
You will never remember me,
who must have seemed so much older,
but was little more than a child myself.
What a gift
and a rarity
to feel an ending
as it's ending
and not weeks later
when you finally realize
the thing you lost
is not coming back.
What a gift to hold you in the sun
on the last day of summer
with children's laughter all around us
for what I knew would be the last time,
which it was.
I swore to myself I'd remember this,
and little Amelia,
I did.