pathways to future
are never perfectly set
and always rocky
cats and roses glow
for days after my birthday
sunrise and sunset
i need happiness
so i ordered mood-boost tea
maybe a bit much
my students need clothes
and “generosity lives”
is this store’s motto
i made it this far
sometimes that’s all you can say
blooming beginnings
she met my baby
before taking her last breath
her diamonds shine on
my mother saved them
for her April-birthstone girl
twenty years past pic
my forty-fifth turn
a lily diamond sparkle
saved for twenty years
April in Denver:
sometimes it can be as cold
as a teenager
paint our broken souls
with layers of gold filling
maybe then we win
scene five from a marriage:
a broken spring equals a broken toaster
but not just any toaster
my bake-everything toaster
my savior to a shitty oven
my air fryer
my baker of brownies and pies
my upper-class kitchen in my middle-class house
i asked if he *thought*
it could be opened up and fixed
and before i’d moved the laundry
from the washer to the dryer,
he had the drill out.
you’ll never find this
i want to tell the world
my daughters
my soul at age nineteen when he walked
so uncertainly
into Pete’s Kitchen
but i did.
i found the man who’d drill a toaster
on a hellish Thursday
a Thursday dripping with tears and self-doubt
just another scene
from a marriage that works.
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