Food from Thought

On Sundays my dreams deflate, a little,
Like saccharine, precarious cream puffs
Getting massacred by a three-ton sigh,
Or a careless hippo’s clod
Or a toddler unaware
Or a callous stop to stare
Who doesn’t like my hair
So there’s no sense sulking there
Anymore
Didn’t there used to be something magical?
Something magical about Sundays?
Something magical about
Anything?
My Great-Gramma, before she disappeared, said there used to be
something magical
My Great-Grampa said the same thing before he left,
Staring at me through the photos,
tucked away on pages in Tupperware
With his marathon eyes big as cream puffs
Looking into my sprint eyes,
deflated as forgotten soufflés.

I don’t have a front porch, Grampa.
Our rocking chair took up too much space.
My mother doesn’t make fried chicken.
Fried chicken’s unhealthy anyway.
The weather’s never right for a pot-luck in the park.
A Sunday drive’s not efficient.
We’re usually too tired or busy to breathe.
And I have too much work to do.
Too much work with all my assigned learning.
Assigned curiosity.
Prescribed life.
So we sit.
In separate rooms.
So we can focus better.
   And we wish we could watch a circus.
Maybe on Monday, or Tuesday.
But by then, the cream puff’s too far past the 5-second rule.
   My whole life is a 5-second rule…
Don’t look just
rush to pick it all up.
Now.
Maybe next week
Maybe then we
won’t massacre the magic.
   Yeah.
Maybe next week.