This dark is the same dark as when you close

your eyes I whisper to our son while he

          catches his breath. It is well past midnight

and he will not describe the face of what

          he fights to unsee. By his feet, the green

glow of a nightlight retreats into blue,

          slips softly to red. Above his bed: notes

we once had time to tape onto the latch

          of his lunchbox, flights of origami

swans, throwing stars and fortune tellers. When

          your turn comes to lie beside him, this is

the bridge he’s set to repeat: Always an

          angel, never a god—and so you hold

him close like a saint shadowed by the axe,

          cradling her own haloed head in her hands.

Copyright © 2024 by R. A. Villanueva. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 9, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“As a kind of force field against bedtime fears, my children have taken to listening to short playlists or single tracks on loop while they fall asleep. What promises comfort goes through waves: there were weeks of Diary of a Wimpy Kid audiobooks mixed with Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita,’ nights and nights and nights of ‘Revival’ by Gregory Porter cross-fading into Bluey’s opening-theme melodica. Last summer, when nightmares and nerves felt impossible to bear alone, my wife and I would move between rooms, singing. This sonnet ends with lines from ‘Not Strong Enough’ by the band boygenius; it ends believing that we will give our lives for those we love.”
—R. A. Villanueva