Tuesdays are
the quiet days,
Mama and I sit silently at the butcher-block
countertop, side-by-side,
our fingers drumming along to the beat of the words
in the evening's newspaper.
"How was
your day?" she asks me,
I pause and think a moment
for creative responses, something good, interesting
I tripped over an electric chair.
"Fine." I draw blanks.
Shoot blanks.
Half-empty like
the bottle of cheap wine
and the box of cereal I'm eating dry, dinnertime.
The silence eases on into stretches that bound
across ages, Siberian planes -
eyes drag along tiny black print and look for
names, names like ours
found in an obituary.