Bedtime
She stills my heart, my thoughts, my world.
So when she asks me to snuggle I say yes.
This odd stage, weeks away from five. So wise but so innocent. Sleep makes her look so small when during the day she dances and runs and creates and fills every space.
Tonight we talk about dancing on pointe and flowers and then 
bad guys.

If a bad guy breaks in, how will you protect me?

And I curse the TV, the snippets of talk radio she hears before I remember to turn on music only. Why does she know this?

I tell her that we lock the door and she sighs; she asks again -I said break in, mom. And I tell her Papa and I would stop this bad guy, we'd get her and her sister out. She thinks. And thinks.

She says, you might need to use your gun mom. And I say yes, I might.

But I lead her down a path where we talk about bad guys. Most are not that bad. They just make mistakes. We talk about setting examples and helping bad guys be good. And she snuggles in tight and falls asleep.

And I don't. I think of when she'll learn someday about monsters. The real ones. The ones that ruin families like the Andersons in Carnation. The ones that stop a sergeant from ever coming home in Idaho. So I stay up and cuddle her tiny being and pray...
and
She stills my heart, my thoughts, my world.