After that, they ate leftovers and loaded the dishwasher and mopped the floor and found the library book and packed up tomorrow’s class snack and signed the permission slip and fed the goldfish and still so much to do—bathtime and storytime and bedtime—shoes and backpacks and hats and socks, notebooks and math books and colored pencils, Crayolas—but they turned to the sky for one minute, clear blue fading to almost-white fading to a band of blush—sunset beginning—and then a cloud of dust from the dirt road blew through the yard, a film over everything—

After that, they cleaned the bathroom, one scrubbing the toilet, the other swabbing counters and mirrors and sink, fast, faster, good enough they said, cross it off the list—

After that, after years and years of that, they wake, then doze until light spills into the kitchen, that same old promise, like it or not, and the dog dozes too, through minutes of no particular significance, and still the sharpened pencils wait by the phone, still the phoebe nests again under the eave, the sparrow in the wreath of plastic lavender and why oh why do these birds return when their children will not?

Bio: Kathleen McGookey