I tell your mother that we can be naked here.
The bay can’t cover like a towel her inhibition—
the belly that’s yet to be a bump of you
but is “a bump no less,” she says.

She wades to shore, waving me in,
but you’re not buoyant—just beautiful.
I’m your floaties; I raise you,

so that when you kick, you dance
along the water, rocking the sea
and your rump. It’s my favorite party trick:

to make you beautiful and real.
The ocean that is this poem babbles
at and against your stone-heavy heels.

As I leave, you’ll likely sink—not to the bed
where your mother waited in her lingerie
for too long, then drifted off. Or, head

tapering, you’ll evanesce like smoke.
Don’t. Your mother is calling me to sleep;
our sureness slips like sand against surf.

When you come—if you do—
I’ll paint my study a nursery hue.
When you arrive, come as love.