Last week Charlotte went to college

Okay, so I eat my cereal fast
and I’m still chewing when
I race out the door and the
radio bridges the gap between
front step and front seat and
even though I’m 48 with
arthritis in my thumb I
pound and I pound with
the music which any other day
might drive me crazy but
today somehow fills the space the
space until I’m backing into it,
that space, rummaging for
quarters at the bottom of my
bag feeding the meter running
the last block to poetry class because
somehow I’ve managed to eat
up that space that morning space
that yesterday belonged to
shrieks and to quarrels, eyeliner, but
that today I’ve filled with everything
else I can possibly muster the
music the cereal the newspapers
cover to cover because I know that at
some point the class will be over the
three-mile run the coffee will stop
jangling at the keys in my
pocket and nothing
no nothing will be left but the
house to return to that space so
huge and clean it defies all the
laws of the world as I know
it and tiptoeing through the
glorious blinding order of it all
I’ll stumble upon a pair of
pink tights, a toe ring, even a
well-placed clot of bathtub hair so
thick and long and dark it couldn’t
possibly be mine.