(THIS is the lovely view across the street from our house.  Amazing.)

When the day starts with your huggy-boy not willing to give
you a hug. 

Then progresses to yelling and hitting. 

When you let them watch way more T.V. than they should and
it only whets their appetite for more. 
And even the fun of pulling sunflower stalks thick as trees from the garden
isn’t enough to help you all find a flow. 

Time is wrinkled.  And
you are caught in its folds. 

On those days there is no low hanging fruit.  The easy way cannot be found.

//

The caterpillar, trapped within its cocoon, let’s go
completely.  Dissolving all but its
essence – a bit of memory and the cells that tell what it will become.  Antennae, wings, legs.  

Sometimes I think this is what we must do on these ill-fitting days
that confine. 

Let go, completely, of all but the essential. 

Curl on the loveseat by the woodstove and nap. 

Sit under the weight of a blanket, bookended on either
side by the boys who were fighting, the ones who want more T.V., and read book
after book.

Then maybe something new, but familiar as your own memory
of how the day could have been, will emerge. 
Something composed from your own longing for something more. 

//

Unable to fit together as you are, the boys will spend an
hour playing in the bathroom closet, their “office.”  And you will doze in and out of sleep in the
one room where you can hear them the least. 

You will make a cup of coffee, adding cream and chocolate
syrup.  Then it will be time at last to
wait for the bus on the front porch.  The
boys, happy now, will attack you from their picnic table pirate ships.  They will “fick” you into believing they’re
innocent farmers before whacking you with a sword. 

In the afternoon sun, you will realize it’s warmer than you
thought and the day, unveiled, will emerge as something new.