Buttons

I steal two buttons and dub them a pair

Take magenta, azure, heavy in my not-a-raincoat

Well a person can dry off better than a photograph

Kids pour outside to hide and seek in an open yard

I drive them to the playground where they slide

Two buttoned boys down a plastic waterfall soaked

By afterlife clouds riddled clean as they come

We each get hit, tramp to the window, no footprints

Howling – best served planetary – ransacks our departure

I smell like weed and nothing else, break my mother’s back

All over the sidewalk, quiet as I hail the driver, less as I drive

Scoop the children up, land on the pavement where they’ll wait

Later for their father. I’ve never seen that part. They dry off

Use a pretty blue stool to reach the sink. Every towel is dirty

They are clean. Beckon me to the nest of stuffed animals

Tell me which coats they’re borrowing. Turn on the TV. Give me

The remote. Ask me to turn it off. Say the puppy went caca

Don’t worry I’ll fix it. Say they want cookies, smear them on the table

Say I can’t leave until they know fifty more games. The smaller one

Copies the older. I hit my pen in the bathroom. Couch cushions pushed

To the floor when I get back. To climb. Little one shows me the dogs

He has painted since yesterday. He likes to make them red and black.

A snake too. Can I go get a banana and more cookies? Won’t smush?

Will I be back tomorrow? How long will it take to become tomorrow?

Only a little. I almost put the buttons back but I don’t. Forty dollars

From mom, a teacher. I wish I’d work for free. Smoke as I pull out

Squall through the neighborhood. Seek. Still have the buttons.