My daughter             before my eyes
placed her clenched fist begged me guess what was
inside it tugging           at my chest until it popped

a plastic button         off my yellow collar
It was little enough to fit inside her fist         but I knew
it wasn’t that Weren’t all my buttons stitched

neatly in a row below my thorn-specked chin      But
this one         rolling toward the darkness under the couch
By the dull blade of light             what little squeezed through

the blinds and their shadows I could make
out a gold speck a fragment              of our breakfast
that morning One insignificant day          in the past

when I was a boy          the side of a cardboard box
said my future daughter’s heart would be
the same             shape as the little bouquet of her fist

Mario Chris is a student in the Creative Writing MFA program at San Jose State University, where he also tutors at the Writing Center. He has poetry forthcoming in the Cæsura 2020 print edition. He lives in Hollister, CA with his family and their Boston terrier, Bosco.