You´re old enough now to name
the unnamable, wear it like a bracelet

clasped around your wrist at birth.
The long-legged spider I crush to quell

your fear and mine is no longer
an arachnid but a concept,

its stillness scuttling through your body
days after I flush away its remains.

At bedtime, the It rises out of
the swamp of your mind, prowls

your dreams, famished. Unicorns,
half-colored drawings, chocolates, coins

of sunlight, your cat´s sleek meow
all gorged, as if life were a dazzle

of lies tumbling about in kaleidoscope.
That plastic forever, cracking.

Nightly, you run into the kitchen,
fear trailing you like the last stark

notes of a funeral hymn, your face
a graveyard of questions. Where

among the tombs of truth and fable
shall I tuck you in? You ask for a glass

of milk, and I see my six-year-old self
trembling in your gaze, the shadows

that used to scuttle across my walls,
all bone and hollow, the gasp

that grated my lungs when I understood
the It would, sooner or later, devour me.

– Julie Weiss

Author’s Note: A few months ago, my six-year-old daughter told us she was scared of death, of dying, a phobia that has haunted me to the point of obsession since I was her age. I wrote this poem as an expression of empathy, and as an apology for not being able to console her with good answers.