Release

Release

Nothing prepares you

in the beginning when he wails into night’s quiet hours

and maybe it’s not about him needing you that much

more about him being mad

to be pushed from warm nest into cold world.

Still you do what you can, breast to soft mouth, arms wrapped

tight against everything. You let go in small ways

like a bandage being torn slowly from scab over wound

you feel how he forgets to look back

that first time at the playground, how he smiles wider

with his friends. It’s what you do. Nobody tells you exactly how.

You order each memory in a scrapbook, smooth down his life captured

in a thousand framed stories

and wonder how seventeen years can lay out so well on the page

while inside

you are ragged edged, coming unglued.

 

Considering the upcoming High School Graduation of my son, Malcolm James Evans, whom I am especially fond of.

SDG, Lesley-Anne

Sunday Soliloquy

“That’s not true. Young women need the Prom. It’s a rite of passage as sacred as getting your driver’s license or buying your first bra. There are only a few things in life that are guaranteed to be glorious and memorable and sparkling with gowns and cummerbunds. Prom is the quintessential teenage experience. Think of the unlucky grown-ups and the elderly who lament the day they decided not to go to the Prom. It is a key ingredient to a happy and meaningful life. Prom is short for Promenade, a slow, gentle walk through a shady glen, and this beloved ceremony symbolizes our journey from the shadows of adolescence to the bright sunshine of the adult world with all its freedoms. And it may be the only chance I’ll ever have to dance with a boy. Maybe I’ll never have someone get down on their knee and offer me a diamond ring. Maybe I’ll never walk down the aisle with a smug look of bridal triumph. But it is my right, and the right of every plain, frumpy, book-wormish, soon-to-be librarian, to have one night of Cinderella magic. Even if we have to go with our cousin, or our gay best friend from tap class, we will have a Prom.”

From a play called “Promedy”, delivered by a bookish 17 year old, Beatrix.