Still in the dirty green apron from Joann Fabric
with her plastic name tag and big pockets,
tonight, she’ll trudge up 24th Street,
swinging a plastic bag from Tag’s Teriyaki.
Her impressive collection of doo-dad key rings will jingle
on her backpack, filled with twenty pounds of textbooks
she schleps between classes because seniors are cool and
don’t need no stinkin’ lockers.
Sweetheart, am I bothering you?
She can’t see the Cascades from the apartment
while she’s sitting on a tiny island of carpet
surrounded by mountains of dirty clothes,
outcroppings of motley worn flip-flops, and
pots and plates with boulders of crusted food.
She’ll be blithely IM’ing intimate strangers
when my phone call interrupts,
three times zones away,
Sweetheart, am I bothering you?
Her hi, as a volley to my chirpy hi, sweetie sails smoothly
across the net and I think yay, everything’s fine
until she says fine, and I know it’s another night
when my daughter is a travel agent for guilt trips.
(My frequent flyer miles could get me to Borneo.)
I’m so lonely she says, and my heart almost cracks until
I realize her attention is focused on earning
Neopoints to spend Neocash on her Neopets.
Sweetheart, am I bothering you?
Are you enjoying the classes I ask, and she shrugs
– the silence tells me she has.
I have to do everything myself she says, and my heart almost cracks:
does it matter that she is probably not doing much of anything?
I ask her do you wish you hadn’t stayed there for your senior year but
I don’t tell her I love my new job, which is 2,800 miles away from her senior year.
We’ll live with the fall-out of our choices,
sweeping dried tears under the rug,
dancing our lives apart until we’re together again.
Sweetheart, I miss you.
