Side-Eye
on the Apocalypse
Purchase
Bento Boxed
We marinate together
in our Bento box house
waiting for this virus
contagious as a yawn
to move on—
to move on!—
So we can lay in our bikinis
and sun hats
by the lapping waves
while the girls search
for salty shells
tossed to them
like dice
by callous, bored gods.
The Walk
My husband and I walk
from the house past cracked garbage cans,
dusty cars and a winter,
spring, summer, fall,
we never saw coming—
not this way, where the usual
ragweed cough becomes an omen,
our daughters like trapped racoons.
Our narrow canyon street is quiet.
We hold hands for a moment,
looking into paunchy rain-soaked trees,
drooping with birds drowsy
from the pollen.
“Migrating yellow-rumped warblers,”
he says—at least the animal world
is still in business.
I’ve surrendered
more easily than he,
home for years
with babies, sick kids and now
these captured young women.
In a way I’m the lucky one,
busy and loved
and pressed all day by bodies
searching for solace, for touch.
We stop to talk Italy
with the neighbors, reaching
into their tree for plumping kumquats.
Then we soak our old chihuahua
in a spraying breach of lawn water
to keep up with her little brother
on the steep climb home.