pining

I do the best I can for the boy.

But ask me to pull from my days beauty? From the trip to the doctor's office, where a babe asleep over his mother's shoulder goes into the room next door, is awoken by cold instruments, screams and screams, the walls so white as to blind? From the rooster my neighbor keeps, raking the grass, crowing day and night, the poor bird pining for a barn, a field of dirt marked with grain? I cannot make beauty nor sense of this.

There is nothing to speak of here, just a mid-afternoon nap if I'm lucky, just a moment to pour the tea. His blonde curls undo me, his questioning why. I am only his mother and tomorrow is like today and I don't know, I don't know.