August 23rd, 2017
Truth Fairy / Stay Or Leave
“Stay or leave / I want you not to go / But you should / It was good as good goes / Stay or leave / I want you not to go / But you did // So what to do / with the rest of the day’s afternoon hey / Isn’t it strange how we change / everything we did / Did I do all that I should / that I could have done?”
—Dave Matthews Band
“…the whole ordiel [sic] was worth it, if only for that one moment.”
—a yearbook
“ ‘Bath / splish splash pop // Kiss / mwah! I love you’ ”
Four family members and a fairy, the Truth Fairy? no wait the tooth fairy, just stopping by for a spell. KINDERGARTEN!, she shrieks and jumps into the air. “Why ‘sometimes’? How about we start with something simpler?!” the mystery of reading, of writing. Moving pieces around on the screen, fitting it together, vs. endless phone calls and busywork and paperwork and tears. Serve how, serve who? Why? Insistent flip of the page for that moment, for that one moment, that moment where you turn around with joy for a kiss; joy for a kiss, joy for learning how. Stay or leave? I want you not to go, but you will. You should. And you still don’t know. But that grin, that joy, that scream for kindergarten and trying to blow bubbles and the smile at the toys and the quick flip of the head for the sweetest baby kiss…some of the rest matters, but nothing as much as this, for what you waited, for how much it hurt, and you made it, you made it, and it was worth it a million times over.