Poem #7: Silent "p"

~for Jason

One pillow beneath two heads
an inch apart in different worlds—
I closed my book and watched her read
The Incredible Invention of Hugo Cabret
and realized, at seven, she reads faster
than I do, as she turned a page before
I finished. I could have said, “Hey-
slow down!” but it was her story, after all.
Are you getting everything? I thought.
As if on cue, she stopped and pointed
to a big word, demanded, “What’s this?”
The teacher in me smiled:
Ah. She needs me!
But with just my pronunciation
of pneumonia, instant recognition
moved her body and eyes back to the page.
Without glancing my way, she said:
“Like Uncle Jason,” who’d been sick
in New Hampshire in December.
A page later, she paused again, asked,
“Can someone die from pneumonia?”
I knew she was thinking someone I love
and not a character in a book. So I answered,
“It depends”—and it was not the first time
I’d given her an answer while thinking:
There’s so much I don’t know.
I could not distract her with tickles or kisses,
so I sat back and watched her progress,
her mouth occasionally forming a smile,
and wondered how many more times
she would encounter pneumonia,
with a silent “p.”