Next Week’s Plans

We will take field trips to the backyard and
name the leaves and
freestyle this whole
preschool learning thing.

Next week, we’ll try the beach or
the zoo, unless they’re delayed
a few weeks or
even a month or two.

Then the week after that and
the week after that,
I’ll turn my back and
let the screens do the parenting for me.

(And are these chunks of
hair I keep losing in the shower
from stress or
that bad at-home dye job from last week?)

But here I am now,
praying for a hurricane to
break up the monotony of
home and heat and sun.

Even a shoreline as beautiful as
the Gulf Coast cannot
help me feel like I’m escaping
this viral trap.