sometimes i’m sitting in the sun watching him play
such intensity and such joy on his face
and i feel overwhelmed
by boredom.

i want to be somewhere else.

i want to be doing something else.

i want to be talking to someone
about what makes them want to live.

i want someone to tell me
their favorite word and have
them repeat it over and over.

i want someone to find a sparkling
line from a novel and read it to me.

But instead i sit on the concrete
wearing a baseball hat to cover
hair that hasn’t been washed in three days.

my boy hangs from a metal bar over an orange plastic slide.
he’s swinging back and forth. he’s laughing at jordan spilling
shoefuls of sand to the ground. i hear a group of nannies
gathered next to me gossiping in spanish. an older boy
throws a juice box on the cement and crushes it with a
stomp.

i put my chin on my knees, flip open my cell phone
and shade the screen with my hand.

two hundred twenty seven minutes until bedtime.

I drove my old Honda sedan, wheat fields blurring yellow
along the flat stretch of highway

And Denise sat next to me in the passenger seat. Her wedding
ring a dull sparkle on the wrong finger.

I looked at her sideways, with half a glance still on the road
"You know, they all thought you were dead."

Her brown hair flapped against her face from gusts of wind
blowing through the open window.

She leaned the top of her head against the headrest. Her white
neck skin stretched tight.

"I know." Her lips quilted into a smile and she laughed.
"I wonder how they got us so mixed up."