Rose of All My Days
Me: “What’s Mommy wearing?”
Evie (age 8): “Her muumuu and the blood of her enemies.”
A bathrobed Boudica, hands on her hips,
my wife scowls in a way that threatens fire
as well as rain. My daughter takes my hand.
She knows her mother’s wrath is better halved
between us—a long division learned at school
that finally has a use. “You see,” I start
then falter as she points to all the piles
of once-clean laundry scattered on the floor,
the rumpled pants and blouses laid like flags
across the back of every chair. And there,
beneath the coffee table, the dog is tucked,
his sock-shod feet a startling cotton white
against his black fur. I try again,
“It’s just a game! We thought—” My wife nods once
then lays her finger hard against her mouth.
The seconds tick in desperate silence, and I
can’t help but drift, to cast myself ahead,
a caddis fly that rides its line’s tight curl
then falls to water green and still. The purl
of rock and creek distills the troubled world,
and time is nothing more than zeroes scattered
in the kindly dark. But soon I’ll feel the tug
of present tense, the pull that brings me home.
And there, amidst the only things I love,
my wife will raise an eyebrow. Her lips will quirk,
and in a bit she’ll say, “You’re both so dead.”
But then to me alone, “Please clean this mess,
And when you’re done, take my bra off your head.”