cereal box morning

7:15: 

I could finish my homework or start a book or start getting dressed but I linger over scrambled eggs and two-parts cereal, one-part-milk, fingers fumbling with my fork or spoon, tines or inverse-mirror clinking, my teeth, dribbling milk caught by divoted paper-towel— my eyes glued to the dandelion-yellow back of the Cheerios box, I rake the same short blurbs for new meaning, thinking of the day I’ll be older and read the paper over morning coffee. 

8:15:

Mom corrals us into the minivan, asking do you have everything? as she dangles her purse from an arm and scrapes for the keys. I don’t know, yet, about Dad’s cholesterol medicine nested in the right drawer next to his electric razor and hard plastic hairbrush, but I buckle my seatbelt thinking that my heart will thank me, maybe today or maybe in a year, or when I’m old, and I think about the rolling fields and the rolled oats and I wish I had a red heart-shaped bowl. 

originally published in The Lighter, Spring 2020