Song

--i want you with your back bent slightly over the red tomatoes ripening in your garden;
i want you wearing one of those oversized hats with the big sunflower bonnet breaking into a million little squares on your work gloves that hot, hot sun (which blares so fiercely these days, doesn't it? was it always this hot? i don't think it ever was);
i want you peering through the shades at Who is ringing the doorbell at this hour, when my shows are on?
i want your hand moving over the dusty case displaying your husband's war medals, whose clean bright colors you know stand for mud and sweat and a constant weariness you can't understand, but Oh, how you loved him;
i want you in your quiet moments: when all the neighbors still sleep and the sun still sleeps, too, and you lie awake and awash in memory and then throw the covers off because you must be up, must be moving, must be doing something right now;

--i want you in the moments before i wake when you whisper into yourself and wonder if he can hear you (yes he can, i'm sure he can);
i want you on your way to work, the coffee cup cooling off in front of the A/C while you drive one-handed (how your mother hates when i do that);
i want you asking me why we never do those things anymore? and i fold my newspaper and say We're too old for that and you look at me and then those things happen again;
i want you saying The music is no good, not like it used to be;
i want you tired, tired from grappling with all-day runaround office nonsense and now in the big armchair you wave for me to come sit with you, smiling;
i want you kneeling down in the closet because he thinks it is a castle and i can't go in, only mommy, and you say Daddy can come into the castle too? - No, not Daddy. Only Mommy;

--i want you in an oversized band t-shirt tucked into tight blue jeans;
i want you late for class, but i plead Just once again and so now you must look in the mirror to fix yourself quickly before you leave and I sigh and listen to the turtles splash in their corner;
i want you angry on election day and for weeks afterwards;
i want you answering my question over dinner (where dinner is Thai noodles which we try to chop stick and then give up and angrily fork until we break the little white box bottom) by saying The Peace Corps I think, and then we eat on in silence;
i want you telling me I have no taste in music;
i want you kissing me over our open Biology books and then the books get tossed to the ground and will do no more teaching for the night;
i want you arguing over what was meant by the scene where the main character gets killed;
i want you reaching for my hand always in crowded rooms;

--i want you waiting all day for your father's gentle early afternoon return home silhouette;
i want you wide-eyed and in disbelief sitting on the Christmas morning floor;
i want you inconsolable because the tired old dog who is your playmate and confidante can't be brought on the bus to school;
i want you ambling around the room, falling every few steps and the adults lean forward, anxiety in the eyes each time, to steady you;
i want you running around the house fresh from the bath and no one can catch you;
i want your cousins saying We can't play hide and seek with her she doesn't know how to play because you always hide in the same place and squeal away your position, in your excitement;

--i want, i want (you
see, my appetite
for you never ends)
-- i want;