The kitchen is quiet. The garden is wild.
The house is straightened, piano is dusty, four baskets of laundry wait around lightly folded.
The kids in their swimsuits kick soccer balls over the lawn
past dusk, the goal stretches into the neighbor’s backyard.
Cheeks and noses glow pink on their pillows.
Brown shoulders and backs — their bodies tattooed by the sun are lean. They sleep in their beds, so solid must their dreams be, while the cool night air, like a mother’s soft hand,
brushes back their curls (tousled and French Toast – golden) from their smooth foreheads.
The kitchen is quiet, except for clinking spoons in empty cereal bowls, scrunching of cheese stick wrappers, tin foil yogurt lids being ripped off,
peach pits, egg shells hitting the trash can sometimes smacking the tile floor beneath, empty bags of cashews, baby carrots — wadded up like mini basketballs and tossed — all net, but sometimes backboard too, empty jars of peanut butter left for me to wash.
The garden is wild with salad greens, basil, nasturtium leaves (no flowers, but hope is alive), chives, tender green, fuzzy tomatoes grabbed and fondled by four lush, strong, adolescent, hopped-up cucumber plants.
mangoes and mojitos 