Bring Back the Kids

 

I danced across the tile 

of the clean kitchen floor

and ate alone, in peace, at leisure,

exercising as I liked, 

enjoying hobbies at length,

I enjoyed the quiet, the echo 

of solitude, the enlightening feeling

of having complete thoughts,

and began to feel human again

for the first time in so long...what joy!

I drank my coffee hot,

had a long hot shower,

ate my food hot. 

No children to interrupt, to disrupt

to bother and trouble and complain,

to need and to ask and to cry. 

No children at last- free, free! 

Until I began to feel, strangely, slowly...

that in all my newfound space- 

space to be fully alive and independent, adult!

there was, too, that cavernous quality

about the clean (too clean) house. 

And there was the realization,

like a reflection, that left alone

I quickly become a vacuous, shallow,

self-centered person, not at all the amazing

superhuman Wonder Woman 

I once thought I would be. 

And so I laugh at my foolishness

and make a call, to bring back, 

bring back the kids,

for whom the house exists.