Your mom in rollers answers the back door and I ask are you home and she says sure darling and then calls your name long and loud up the stairs

I wait

It’s going to be a hot one she says to me and scratches under a roller why don’t you come in and have a glass of ice tea while you wait

No thank you I say

I kick the dirt I pick a scab I lick my finger to press on it and then you’re there

Hi

Hi

I told my mom we had a fight and she asked do I want to kiss and make up and I said yes and she said that was good and then she asked what was I bringing you and I said I don’t know and she said it’s traditional to offer something like an olive branch for example but I don’t like olives plus I think olive trees only grow like in Jerusalem or something so I brought you this maple branch from when the tree fell in the hurricane last year remember?

Yes. When it crashed up Bobby Brown’s big brother’s motorcycle.

Yes. They haven’t taken the whole tree away yet and I thought that it’d be a good one to get a big branch from and it was. I thought maybe we could add an extension to the tree house wanna?

~ * ~

P.S. A special thanks to David Cohen, Brand Therapist and Doodler-in-Chief over at Equation Arts. He read my wee story on Facebook and was inspired to doodle me the doodle you see in this post. Also, David does a podcast every Monday morning called, Be a Beacon. (Ahem. I will be a guest on his show this coming Monday, July 16!)

P.P.S. My wee story is a prose poem, which I like to imagine is what happens when prose and poetry make love. I have that from a poet-English teacher at Boston Latin. Well, not the bit about the poem and the prose making love, but rather the bit about what I wrote being a prose poem. In one way, I really don’t care what something I write is called, but— Wait! Why am I telling you this? Well, maybe you, like me, find yourself confused about all the different kinds of poetry. Maybe you don’t give a whit. Regardless, when she called my wee story a prose poem I sighed a big ahhhhh! Finally I knew what to call a bunch of things I’ve written which aren’t quite or only prose or poetry. (In case you’re curious, here’s what she said about it: “…it seems to reside in the world of prose poetry: narrative, told directly, prominent dialogue.” There you have it. Now I need to go talk to her about punctuations. They, except just a smattering of them, didn’t seem to want to be in this prose poem story. But now I wonder… What do you think?)

P.P.P.S. Yes, my prose poem was inspired by a fight, which is what can happen when a misunderstanding is met with defensiveness, which is what I did. I felt so sad the morning after all my reactivity with this dear person, and this story is what came from that.