I am your Om and you are my Fry.
Once I was your mountain 
and you Muhammad.
Now I am the object in your rear view,
though not closer than I appear.

Your wings, still wet from the egg, 
stretch, flightless.
I want to say, Suck it up, Buttercup. 
But I don’t. I say, Nice try.

And as if to reward my white lies
you take flight,
wonky and tilted,
but airborne nonetheless.

I learned in the NICU
that you came into this world with your own agenda.
Your own timing.
I made the choice early on
to loosen the reins and give you your head.

Black on black.
Steel toes.
Battle jackets.
Lemmy Kilmister screen saver. 
What will others think? Your dad pondered as if to himself. 
The betrayal in the question is too much. 

Who knows how I would have digested your life experiences,
coming of age in this era of the stable genius. 
Your best friend shot in the face by her own mother,
price tag still hanging on the gun. 
Isn’t that enough to send anyone to chocolate chip cookie dough 
by the gallon?

Serenading me, quoting The Damned
with such joy,
Nothing to corrupt the eyes
There is no vision here.

Until you, it never occurred to me to 
not like Robert Frost
or unconditionally love my own creative works.  

I curse the hard boiled egg
that doesn’t want to give up its shell.
I wouldn’t either, you say, it’s the only thing it knows.

And yes, the packing peanuts that dissolve in water are cool
but why am I the one who has to scrape
the rough residue from the side of 
my hand-blown espresso cup?

Your inability to pass up a “Woohoo!” deal
on a water-deprived succulent or
an orchid that is long past its prime is legend, 
as if you are pathologically predisposed to grow things 
despite my warnings that you will be buried under
an avalanche of organic material. 

Your Target bags
laden with bath towels 
and kitchen floor mats 
also sport the occasional fluffy caterpillar
and Fischer Price record player.
Is this adulting to you?

As a joke I offer you the dining room chairs
that shit plastic on the hardwoods.
You decline, saying, Give them time. 
They’ll disintegrate and you can sweep them up and 
throw them away.

I always told you we had chewing gum hearts,
nothing could separate us.
But what will become of this house 
in the vacuum of your absence?

I pretend to be the mother robin
when all I can think of is
a Fry-shaped hole that will exist
at my center.

My encouragement, another white lie to be rewarded
or not,
as fate, or your cosmic prefab construct, will determine.