For the past 3 months,
our house has taken on the acoustics
of a spoon caught in a garbage disposal
that occasionally stops spinning
to study Dude Perfect and learn how to monetize the chaos.

All I really wanted for ninety days in a row
was a solid five minutes without someone yelling DAD
with the urgency of a man pinned beneath a tractor
when the actual situation is that the remote touched Wyatt’s thigh.

Ninety days of glorious, feral paradoxes:
someone was always too full for dinner yet in critical need of dessert,
or demanding privacy while asking to be watched,
or soaking wet despite being nowhere near water.

In June, I refereed a trial over who was looking at whose waffle.
The defendant ate the evidence.
The plaintiff requested a new waffle
and the death penalty.

In July, I had to shout “Get your penis off the piano”
which is not a sentence found in any parenting books
because parenting books are written by cowards.

In August, I walked into a crisis with “Nobody is in trouble. Just tell me what happened,”
and all three boys looked up and asked, strictly off the record,
what a double-pane window costs to replace these days.

In every month every room had a noise.
Every noise had a lawyer.
Every lawyer was shirtless and demanding a different cup.

And I spent the summer begging for five minutes of silence,
as if silence were a DoorDash order
that kept getting delivered to the childless couple down the block.

Then September arrived on Monday
and ran a comb through their hair
and put shoes on their feet.

When it was time for them to go back,
all of us parents stood scattered across front lawns like shipwreck survivors,
waving from the receding shores of ourselves,
while the neighborhood gave up its kiddos
one brave name at a time.

Have fun, I yelled.
Be kind. As if those four words could follow them everywhere I could not.

I brushed a crumb from Juice’s cheek
because there was still a crumb
and because I was still allowed.

And then they left.

Three backpacks packed for elsewhere.
Everything I would run into a fire for.
Love standing behind them,
with nowhere to put my stupid hands.

Back in the kitchen,
the refrigerator hummed so loudly
I nearly asked what it needed.

A bird tried three new notes outside,
and abandoned each one.

My feet kept pacing the floorboards,
still waiting for somebody to call me fat
or throw an elbow into my ribs
and then ask why I was being weird about it.

For months, all I wanted was a thought I could finish.
But now every thought went looking for them:

I hope somebody sat beside them.
I hope they ate.
I hope the world looked up when they walked into the room.

And under all of it: Come back.

Break another window
and explain how the baseball was going through something.

Flood the sink and ruin the rug.
Build the fort with the expensive pillows.
Tell your brother the password is his name
and then refuse to let him in because he said it “with the wrong emotion.”

I’ll be the dragon.
I’ll die badly. Dramatically.
I’ll get up when you tell me I’m not dead enough.

The kitchen is clean.
The ice maker drops three cold cubes for nobody.

And I just want June again,
and three boys filling the doorway up with dirt on their elbows,
hands holding something we absolutely can’t keep,
asking, “Why does the sun work so hard?”

Come here.
I think I know.

“Back to School”
16×20, Acrylic and Ink on Canvas