and she cries and she sleeps and she rides
through our kitchen in a pink stroller. She takes
a tiny bottle in her pursed lips, and every night
she takes a bubble bath. As my daughter drapes
a washcloth across her brown shoulders
and down the delicately curved back, I think
about the man I loved years ago—his elbows,
his knees, those ashy places I caressed without
understanding—and how his mother told me
make sure he moisturize, as if she agreed I had
any business caretaking his body in a country
that would rather see him dead. What do I
think I can teach my daughter, especially when
I’ve still learned so little? Only that we might all
be transformed by our own unknowing love.
Keetje Kuipers, “I buy my white daughter a black doll” from All Its Charms. Copyright © 2019 by Keetje Kuipers. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.
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