—SOMETIMES DAYS MOVE SLOW

 

 

The Fire

 

I hear my son’s new girl sigh 

while walking past my office 

in the hall and I’m wondering 

what could be so troubling for her 

her 24 and loaded with the 

kind of looks and luck every person 

on the planet wishes for 

or dreams about yet she’s apparently 

exhausted or flummoxed  

or maybe troubled about something 

she dreamt because it does happen

real life jumping the curb 

just like that—a miscarriage 

an infidelity, a reckoning hanging 

on the ledge or lam— 

then getting transferred and distorted 

in your subconscious like 

a Lynch film you end up 

thinking about days afterward 

scratching your head expecting to 

find blood or some kind of boil 

yet there’s nothing but stray gray hair

I might have been that young once 

but it’s hard to say anymore

I hear them now one floor down 

sharing cereal or TikTok together

laughing about whatever it is 

that could be so hysterical unlike

the bombs that dropped again 

in Ukraine or the Texas flood 

killing all those young girls 

just out Christian-camping 

and of course I’m jealous or envious—  

the difference in those two words 

just another thing I’m unsure of— 

how they can patter on like that

as carefree as butterflies in a breeze 

though even butterflies have 

something they’re aiming for 

a leaf to land on before the fire

comes and burns their wings to ash.