the traditional is special when it is ours
My younger sisters fast asleep, eyes lashed shut by firefly dreams. Outside flash pink tail-lights as elephants vacuum up the virgin night. Trip-toeing the dark, tight together by ecstatic cling, asterisks of laughter, hard to see, punctuate exhaustion around new-old eyes.
Graduation night, the sort where slivered moons rise and fall to the occasion. Where silence swallows the storm as softly as time passing, as darkly as carbon pressed by paper in the day. Graduation came as expected—with the unexpected, as a cliché to call our own.
My sweet mother, put no no’s into our business. Growing up. Moving out. Words awkwardly wrapping a novel concept. She eased the screen door so it wouldn’t slam, letting the puppy in, again a rubber-band of energy around his bottomless beg of tricks.
The night fell. The day broke with the yawning of dawn serenaded by the bells of St. Mary’s. A port town. Close enough to hear the rusty-hinge cry of gulls. To feel salty breeze, hear it snap a flag awake, watch it inhaled by sails in the marina.
The sun’s thin rays will burn off the fog by breakfast. Meanwhile we linger, reluctant to abandon the playground, and stroll past the house. No place to go and all day to get there. Too tired to sleep away yesterday. The moon too full to feast upon tomorrow.
