warm days chilling into the night. she is afraid of me when she is in pain. a splinter in her toe, my mad grip on her foot with tweezers to dig it out. i let her go, she was sobbing, shocked, i broke some sort of trust with her. you say i am imaging things, but today, she was running, joyfully, trotting to our car. i had our son in one arm, i was watching her little feet dance forward along the pavement, admiring. she reached our car, she stopped but for some reason then stumbled. landed on her face, her hand. i ran to her, tried to help her up one armed, baby still in my other grip. she was sobbing hard, screaming in pain. i needed to see the damage, if there was any, my little girl. and i looked and looked but she was reluctant, afraid. small scrape on her nose, another above her lip, slight swelling off center. but she so afraid, afraid of what i would do next to fix it. and all i could do was hold her and promise her that she would be alirght. that i wouldn’t do anything to make it worse. i wouldn’t do anything at all.