Applesauce

I present to you a sleepless night
not like a fact, more like a question
of childhood: did I ever sleep as a baby

I have no recollection of those days
when my arms where the size of a spoon
my head, bald yet tender

you can remember well the mixture of foods
I ate, the times I forced you to worry about me
sick with fever, with a buzzing in the ears

today I make applesauce, not jarred
must be the burning sugar that makes me
remember, the smell of tulk powder running

on my stomach, mixed with Arak
foods we ate, happy tummy kisses
and an infinite sense of panic that tells me
you never stopped your worry;
it just grew to fit my tree-log arms.