The Crazy Days of April

You are probably busy
picking up your uniformed school children,

listening to your heels scrape linoleum in the frozen food section,

holding your breath as your jet hits turbulence somewhere over Kansas,

sticking your card into the reader at the gas pump and waiting for your credit to be approved,

sitting in a dark room listening to your father draw his last breaths,

dabbing perfume on your wrist, your neck, while you stare in the mirror
at the wrinkles you didn’t expect.

Much like you do, one foot in front of the other, one breath after the next,

I slog through the crazy days of April-

the sky is either endless and blue or clogged with clouds and spitting rain,

another in between,
alone in space.

Another year,
and who could have imagined
all this undone?

On Friday, I’ll see him again, you’ll see her again, he’ll see you.

We’ll drink and laugh and look at each other with children’s eyes.

Oh, to be young again…

to bark at the moon.