Presage
He is eight and wouldn’t go
to soccer practice yesterday.
He will never be able
to sustain a marriage.
Tonight he couldn’t sit still
during High Holy Day services.
He will never be able
to function in a workplace.
Then as I am tucking him in,
feeling that he is warm,
he begins to squirm and retch
with the whole of his small body
and I switch my indictment
as quickly as I flip on the bathroom bulb.
I ache and repent through
the ensuing days of Jello and saltines
until one morning I don’t
give him a popsicle for breakfast.
And he goes back to asking,
as he so often does, at eight,
“What’s in it for me?”
And I imagine the pillage.