Slow Dancing On Pizza Crusts and Avocado

If I go missing, it's because Maile got rid of me for putting this picture of her on the blog.
If I go missing, it’s because Maile got rid of me for putting this picture of her on the blog.
“Seven o’clock,” you say, along with something
about disappearing days, and then you lean
against the kitchen counter, sigh, a cloth in your hand.
I nod without saying anything,
cleaning out the sink, because what can anyone say
in the face of time, passing as it does, a thief
and a giver?

I’ve grown tired of traveling alone

Tired of traveling alone
I’ve grown tired of traveling alone
Won’t you ride with me?
“I always think of you when I hear
that song,” I say, and you smile bashfully,
sidle up alongside me.
Before I know it we are
slow-dancing in the empty kitchen, you still holding
the cloth, me stepping on
a slimy piece of avocado Leo
dropped earlier in the day.

 

I’ve grown tired of traveling alone
Tired of traveling alone
I’ve grown tired of traveling alone
Won’t you ride with me?*

I remember dancing with you that way
when we were still teenagers on the brink
of our twenties, on the edge of a life
unimaginable. Before we were handed a life
with five kids and one on the way. This life.
This crazy, mundane, adventurous life
where you dance without putting down
the dish cloth, where I step on
an old pizza crust
and it doesn’t even phase me.
(Jason Isbell, “Traveling Alone”)