justwrite 13 february

when it’s your birthday and then it’s the next day you celebrate anyway you pay your own ticket fare and square you jaw you hem and haw wondering if you’re being read and keeping your chin up instead of dragging down the alongway home the drone and the mean plus the average of the square and other calculations face this nation and despite despising unionizing we are turning ourselves redder than we think we drink in confusion and we spit out illusions turning the tunes around lounging in sweatpants and dancing to awkward songs the kinds you’re not supposed to dance to but it’s true I never learned there are ways I never lean and there are stories I can’t mean in the first person although rehearsing those lines always sounds just find in the shower the accent is clearer the mirror too near though when eyes look back at you it’s true that the nerves kick in it’s a sink or swim crawl and all the kings’ horses never went to the YMCA never paid to play in that fray we of the preschool variety we of the tiny feet daycare we and our hair never cut by roving safety scissors we of the many-windowed room distant toward the highway but smells from the side of the pool angling through the red mats the blue mats and all the naptime that ever there was there were graham crackers which seem to matter in recollection and also smocks cubbies I think and bags with important belongings carried back and forth and sometimes left behind but no one minds when you’re of a certain age you’re all on the same page even though the parents and the teachers are in different books some other kind of series not highlights for kids at the dentist’s office with the smug realization that you are gallant and not goofus and yes you would always do the right thing in such a situation too and the next page is the one where you find all the hidden pictures you are a champion you are the waiting room hero and when your name is called this is the carpet you ride back to find out you have cavities because yes juice has sugar too and this is where the truth sets in again a little too close and the drilling sends it home but never mind and anyway and there’s nothing left to do but play until dinner with the sweet success of earned sympathy turning to look at you and smile sympathetically while wondering still how such a thing as a cavity could have happened under their watch and isn’t that how it always is cliché plié and done with ballet