All that ticking!
Sweet clock
you must be tired, please
rest your hands
here
a moment –
my daughters
are hugging and wind
has tangled their hair
in a shining knot
and the big one is
telling the little one
don’t cry when it
pulls,
soon she’ll come
home, she’ll come
home soon.

Elizabeth Kuelbs holds an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She writes around mothering three teenagers, running a small real estate investment business, and saving unattended bagels from her Bernese Mountain Dog. Her work appears in Punchnel’s, Cricket, The Hawaii Women’s Journal, Vestal Review, The Children’s Writers Guild and elsewhere.