Daily Routine another day of checking the numbers, just part of the routine. I watch them climb and tumble, climb and tumble. a lottery without a ticket, and no real prize. still waiting for the flatline, like a heart in a season finale my husband brings me coffee and I take the laundry to the basement. out of detergent. will the men of the neighborhood lose their minds if I go buy some without putting a bra on late last night when I got off work a man called out to me, "hey lady just getting off work!" yup, that's me I guess it's funny to me when they say things that are simply factually accurate. me in my uniform. me in my daily routine when I play wordle, my first guess is heart and my second is jumps. *** Going Back This neighborhood has ghosts, and most of them are friendly. At the coffee shop, someone still remembers my order. A neighbor sits in the same spot, reading the newspaper. I know that he switches sides of the street to follow the sun. I know when it rains, he picks up his little dogs and carries them beneath the scaffolding. The dentist updates my address and changes my emergency contact to "husband." One flower shop replaces another. A girl bikes by holding a mirror. The person who lives in our old apartment has green curtains and I know nothing else. *** Normal Children shouldn't have to hide in a school, locked down and waiting. It's not normal to need dress rehearsals for active shooters, never knowing when the curtain will go up. Or it is normal, and it's too normal, when this isn't normal. Shouldn't be normal. Are we accepting this? It feels like we're accepting this, the inevitable news cycle. The thoughts and prayers. The moments of silence. The decisions to do things that don't get done.
—Submitted on 09/24/2022
Abigail Welhouse is the author of Small Dog (dancing girl press, 2021), Bad Baby (dancing girl press, 2015), Too Many Humans of New York (Bottlecap Press, 2016), and Memento Mori (a poem/comic collaboration with Evan Johnston). Her poems have been published in The Toast, Yes Poetry, Ghost Ocean Magazine, and other journals.
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
