Danger: For Chloe
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Our lives are such a line of near-misses, would-be deaths. That day years back at daycare, you discovered a space in the nursery playground fence and being curious, tried to climb through to touch whatever was on the other side.
You’d managed to wriggle halfway when your shirt snagged a wire, and your friends—three, four years old— grabbed and held as you struggled to get loose—toward what? Flash of a leaf? Green of a piece of glass?
Smile like a mother’s across the busy street? They clung and clawed at you until grownups came and pulled you away. So close, so close. Even now my breath catches when I consider. My pulse quickens. I bless small hands. [End Page 188]
Roger Jones is author of three collections of poems. During the spring of 2009, he will begin serving as the poetry editor of the Texas Review.
