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# System prepended metadata

title: A Gift

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# A Gift
**by Sallie Crotty**

Your ears rest quietly 
in boxes 
on your dresser top

as you snuggle 
with your blue blanket, 
you drift into a world
only you know

a dog barks 
under the neighbor’s live oak 
on this sticky summer night

your sister plays 
another song on the piano
while your father and I 
begin our conversations 
of another day spent

you are filled with a silence
none of us can divine
until another exquisite morning begins
when you will delight in a gift 
the rest of us had all night