Perfect

You are perfect, my daughter told me,
while I, guilty of so many sins—
of impatience, ignorance, intransigence;
of letting her eat cookies, candy, cake,
of forbidding her cookies, candy, cake;
of watching her too closely
and not watching her closely enough—
I denied her claim,
till, she, insistent, said,
you are perfect to me,
and maybe we will come to a day,
in two, or four, or six years' time,
when she yells at me
as she numbers my faults
with hideous accuracy,
a day when I am angry
not in the bounded fashion
of one telling a child
to stop crayoning the wall,
but in a fury that possesses me
from toe to scalp—
on that day
let me pause, take a breath, and remember
how I was once perfect to her,
how she is still perfect to me.

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Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but has lived in Pittsburgh for thirty years. She is a Grand Master of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and three-time winner of both the AnLab Readers' Award and the Rhysling Award. Her latest poetry book, "How to Navigate Our Universe," answers vexing questions such as "How to Surprise Saturn" and "How to Survive a Black Hole." She hides her online presence with a cryptically named website (marysoonlee.com and an equally cryptic Twitter account (@MarySoonLee).