I'm a New Chicken, Clucking Open Hearts and Years

the man in front of me in the grocery store line pulls money from his sock, smiles, and carts away his ramean noodles and tuna fish. i have a picture of the kid behind me. i took it on a sunny day when his brother and him were playing football in our backyard. i turn around again and he is gone. sent hurriedly down aisle 7 for the forgotten bag of something. but his mother is there and she is beautiful, and her hair wraps and braids up into itself and carries little seashells. i wish he hadn't been sent down aisle 7. i wanted to show him where trees are best for climbing and how to make castles from cardboard boxes and tell the secrets we'd kept from each other. i rummage in my purse for change, buy creamer and some gum, bring them home, and read this and this
it is 10:30 in the morning, and now (and over coffee with cream in it) i am thinking about other things like bicycles and landscapes ive seen you in and things that might not happen again. ive written two wishes in my little blue book.
1. wake up in the morning next to my cedar wood bird and you
2. read where the wild things are

*photograph by grant edwards, fog 3