The Hundred Names of Love 

Annie Lighthart 

The children have gone to bed.

We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly

behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing

warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together

and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet,

the forgiveness of that sleep.

Then the one small cry:

one strike of the match-head of sound:

one child’s voice:

and the hundred names of love are lit

as we rise and walk down the hall.

One hundred nights we wake like this,

wake out of our nowhere

to kneel by small beds in darkness.

One hundred flowers open in our hands,

a name for love written in each one.