wax ovenbird My daughter haunted the midnight hour, cloaked in cloth the colour of ripe lemons, a wavering star in the dark doorway, her presence inducing terror with the context all wrong—the hour, the darkness, the clock with its numbers blinking 12:05. My daughter was a candle dripping wax from her right ear onto the floor. My daughter was an infant wailing in the night. The past and present met at the noctidial precipice, and I drew myself upright in bed, grasping for handholds in the slippery space between sleep and waking. My daughter was snow-clad, muffled and distant. I peered into the endless tunnel of her ear looking for wolves curved in predatory repose, their tails tucked against the membrane of her eardrum. My light was too weak to reach the back of her cochlear cave but I caught movement and shadow, a moth-like flutter, as she stretched the hinge of her jaw towards something like relief. Back to bed. Tears dried and nose blown and blankets smoothed and promises made. We will fix it in the morning. At some point she slept, but I did not. My sleep was out running beneath the waxing moon. I am the guardian of her night, and I must never reveal how my hands tremble in the jaws of this midnight unmooring. 261017 what's it to you? who go blather from