When I first started this blog in October 2018, my children were 4 and 2. Where the heck did all those years go?! This one’s for all the parents still trying to hold on …
From the window, a burst of sky
blue pops out
of the naked cherry blossom tree
underneath the dusky gray clouds,
derailing me from sweeping
through the room collecting crumbs: long-forgotten Legos, colorful hair ties, scraps of craft paper.
Skies that were robin’s egg blue only yesterday,
when you placed the mini pink bathtub just so
on the pavers, poured in the bubbles, and nestled Barbie under the suds.
You called it, “Mommy takes a nap.”
Or when you climbed onto the pretty pink seat of your pretty pink bike with the pretty pink baby carrier on the back,
your pretty-in-pink Valerie doll strapped in tight.
Or when your little brother lugged his raptors and T Rexes out
into the wild, stomping and growling
“I a T Rex, I a T Rex.”
Or when he dashed from behind that thorny bush, exclaiming
“I went through there, and I didn’t even see any bugs!” in his chirpy voice
now receding with the dusky gray fog of my memories.
The winds seem to whisper as they die
down,
echoing my melancholy,
and suddenly I’m back at that window, staring out
at a lonesome tree,
where a sky-blue swing hangs
silent and still.
* Images by A Momma & Her Pen.