Flitimticess

I err. The warmth, the cheeks,
the wit, the beauty, so soon!
I exclaim.
I do.

But the girls scowl and frown.
Little Mother Superiors, they remind me
that they are not the best daughters
or the most wonderful little girls
in the world.

“Every child is the best,” they say primly.
“It’s rude and not nice.
We can be wonderful but
not the most wonderful.”

“Well, excuuuuuuse me,” I would say
(a poor man’s Steve Martin, very poor indeed)
except they remind me that
I am the one who taught them that
every child is the most wonderful
child in the world and
no fair uh-uh no fair comparing.

I did? Which cup of coffee
made me so wise? Which
of my sixteen daily pills?
Most days I cannot recall
how the day began
and ended
besides the requisite
juicebox and glass of water
bookends.

Tonight, with house full only
of soft sleeping sounds of
hounds and children,
and a train outside that
wants to find its way here,
I sift through
my elder daughter’s homework.

Today, I remember.
My head has been full of shocking geography:
a terrain of violent stabbings and thrilling faintings
petty slaps, sweaty pleas, comic book vengeance
and passion come to its senses.
I have been tripping over this
wretched, comic landscape
all the die-long day.

So my hands are grateful now
for the sifting. I whisk my fingers
through cursive (no longer penmanship)
through neat stacks of Chinese-acrobat sums
through spelling practice.

Parallel is a conman.
We all know this.
Poor kid, she did her best.

Did her best. Did I?
I shoo away another dark cloud that
darts behind my scratched lenses,
mocking.
I shake an essay at it.
Something she has written.
I crack the horizontal blue lines
at the darkness until it is
banished.

There will be another hopeless thought, soon.
I must hurry.

I read the graphite words
that my firstborn, my paperwhite stalk,
my funny April Valentine,
has scrawled in between
these fussy blue lines. The lines
alternate solid and broken,
like most of us.

“In one hundred years
I think school will be longer
and will have five specials a day
includeing robot class,
flying class,
yoyo class,
and history class.

Homework will have questions like this:
pirite + emrude + migine = ?

Andswer: flitimticess.”

The dog sighs nearby,
dreaming of plump squirrels.

I realize I am holding
my breath
and my heart.
My hand rests above
the swell of my breasts,
the breasts that embarrass her now,
but that she once clung to, oh.
Clung does not begin
to describe.

Another buzzing misery will
find its way here soon
to my kitchen table.
It may come from the train
I can only hear at night.
After all, the train must transport
something.
Even trains long for purpose.

Quickly. Yes.
In the dim kitchen
I must know what I know,
before my magic maudlin wondrous first
awakens
and catches me
loving her too boldly,
flitimticessantly.