What a sorrowful Sunday beneath the sun,
With salty drops carried by the breeze;
I bear a hardened shield of words undone,
For I’ve penned them a thousand times with ease.

I watch the hours groan behind the pane,
The pendulum’s glass, fogged and smeared,
St. Peter’s calendar stands void and plain,
And in the air, the scent of marjoram is seared.

The neighbors sleep as noon draws near,
While we’ve been awake since sirens’ first call.
In ten minutes, I’ll roast the chicken here,
And we’ll ponder how to hate this calm.

What a dreary winter Sunday we share,
Amid quarrels and pacifiers’ empty pleas.
Perhaps today’s but a frail tether to bear,
Between tomorrows just worse than these.

The bells echo sadly in the narrow streets,
Sounding even more forlorn than we,
As we await our meal, our silence greets,
I dressed for the office, you a cowboy to be.

What a bleak month to spend together,
How the umbrella at the door annoys,
I speak of the weather, you wish for better,
And perhaps it might soothe my crooked joys.

Not even football do I seek on the screen,
For today, I limit myself to idle and drear.
Maybe I’ll take you where memories have been,
To that slide you call, where prisons appear.

I miss you more when you’re by my side,
For I think on how distant I once had been,
At twenty-three years, with promises tied,
But none kept, as the days have thinned.

What a sad day to speak of all this,
Tomorrow I’d lose the thread once more,
Back to the office, where meats are the gist,
While you live in your world of preschool lore.

You teach me how good it can be
To waste time lying flat on the floor,
To sweep under the rug all the misery
Of a life that’s like bars closing more.

What a useless Sunday for those who live,
Yet perhaps I’ve learned more than enough,
For now, you admire me, with words you give,
How I love those who walk through life rough.

Let me remember you just as now,
As I weep while watching you within,
With your thing colored like dawn somehow,
And your socks mismatched, so akin.

It kills me faster to see you grow
In the world of adults, pushing through,
Than to choke on a cigarette’s slow woe,
And a coffee laced with Sambuca’s hue.

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