In the morning it's the sweet song that breaks our long silent night and dawn wakes and you're jazz hanging one-handed from the moon kissing us goodbye at the mountain tops. By nine, you're two cups of coffee buzzing sweet and low almost a whisper of sound the scent of a child in aural form. By noon you barely stop to sniff at your lunch and you're a tornado of "Today we" and "And we" and "Can we" and "I love" and "I need, I need, I need." By three you've talked the best parts of me out and they lie sullen on the couch dreaming of earplugs. Four rings itself in with a squelched scream, brother and sister talking over each other, competing for quality decibels. By five I'm two fingers into my first whiskey and dreaming of the crowd noise from five football games. At seven, we kiss, and I send you to sleep. Seven-fifteen and I want another beer as I hear the thump-thump-thump of your brother, your percussive compatriot and you're still blathering on singing songs about days or numbers or whatever it is that skitters through your head like a small animal with big predators.
And by eight, my sweet, I'm swaddled in a blanket of silence thick as my love for all of you. Your father knows better than to talk. He sits. I sit. We breathe and listen to the cricket in the basement, the cat who misses your life sounds. He yowls, scared, without the soundtrack of you.
By midnight I miss you.
Very nice. That made me smile.
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