brawn / mulch / tryst / voice

In the mornings, I pretend to find solutions for things beyond my control, twirling the alphabet like a roulette wheel until certain words tumble out, and I pretend they’re tea leaves or optimistic prophecies slipped inside an after-dinner sugar cookie, and I pretend that in just a few hours, someone will call a truce to the war metastasizing seven times zones away, and I pretend no one has died, or will die, and I pretend that the subway stations are still subway stations, and adults are still going to work and children are in their classrooms, raising their hands and asking for a little extra help, and I pretend the apple on the teacher’s desk looks like a Normal Rockwell painting, glossy as a promise, and the lunch ladies look like all our grandmothers. And I spin
the wheel until the lights turn green.

And then I stop pretending because this isn’t a game.