You’ve crashed on our bed, in almost the exact spot where I was heading. I don’t know when you stumbled in but the sheets and light summer blanket are wildly crushed beneath where you fell. Your third year of high school completed hours before, you now are a senior and have no gas left.
While your sister parties and galavants with her crew — the end of Math for a few months elevating her ecstatic mood — you face plant into your parent’s bed, not even knowing the scurrying about you.
Grandparents arriving soon make the house and yard into a pit row frenzy. Your room’s the worst; everything needs attention from a semester’s worth of bedroom abuse. We could report you and the authorities would have no choice, but there you sleep where you dropped, a fallen soldier whose own bed is not even habitable.
I want to wake you, nudge your memory back towards cleaning, organizing and putting away the eight-of-the-same brass instruments that now overflow our common area. But I know exhaustion when I see it. The baritones won’t march themselves up into your hidden, secret room. But neither can they remain.
Impasse.
Then scuffing, half-found steps back down towards the living. There you are, seeing me barely through bleary lids. Plopping on my lap you say you’re hungry. Maybe a year is left before I cease cooking for you.
Scrambled eggs, cheese, old french fries chopped and sauteed up anew.
Comfort food resurrects.