Quiet Light versus The Apocalypse

by Kayleigh Cline

I spent my mat leave
                nursing away your sadness

and painting Quiet Light
                into the corners of this room.

Now, here we are again
                trapped in a pocket of time
                where all is too loud and too quiet —
                                               this time, you are six years old
                                               this time, fear paces outside the door.

You’ll hush my anxieties with the white noise
                of blanket forts and meltdowns,
                of pancake suppers and bedtime stories.

Today, I will find a can of old Quiet Light
                beneath the basement stairs,
                and will call it back into action
                to recoat the cracks in the plaster
                I’ve spackled with quarantine energy.

You will want to help.               You will need to help.

You will want the roller —
                drawn to the control it gives you
                over how much light you use
                to make the world.

So here are the survival skills
                I will teach you
                for this new world:

                                how to roll w’s,
                                                never lines,
	 
                                how to use an angled brush 
                                                with a bit of pressure 
                                                to make a clean line

                                and how to feather, feather, feather 
                                                the edges away. 

---

Kayleigh Cline (she/her) has been most recently published in FreeFall, untethered, and Prairie Fire. Her work has also appeared on a bus and on a beer. In 2022, her poem “American Robin” won the Alberta Magazine Award for Poetry. She is an active member of the Stroll of Poets Society, Parkland Poets Society, and the Canty Collective of Writerly Women.