Goodnight Moon Sonnet

My four-year-old daughter, Tess, brings it home
from preschool on an autumn afternoon.
We say goodnight to the brush and the comb
and the bowl of mush, the stars and the moon.
As a girl, I wished to exist somehow
within this tranquil space, snuggled in bed
with the rabbit, gazing at the plump cow,
cozy in the great room of green and red,
but Tess says she likes the big red balloon
the best and wants to color it. She asks
me to draw the cow over the white moon
and with my crayon I’m careful, exact,
trying to stay within my small confines,
while Tess makes bold red strokes outside the lines.