Bringing them home for the first time
I wondered, had I made the right
choice, but
already I was a year or
two down the line, wiping, from their faces,
soft landscapes
of porridge—too late
to return them—what a joke, and anyway
they’d begun
to seem sort of
special; not just to me,
but also to you and our friends who extended
compliments when they stopped by
for lunch, and
the more I thought about it, the more I
knew the choice hadn’t really
been a choice at all—having them
was the way
of carrying on; otherwise in what wildness
would I live? Here
I am, then, at the end of the day, washing,
toweling them dry, not so
much for their sake
as mine.
