Meanwhile, we are running low on milk. It is all my daughter

wants to drink, even in her bath, she wants it to run sticky

down her chin and chest, clouding the bathwater gray,

like her belly is the Niagara Falls of Milk. Sometimes

she pours it deliberately into the tub, just to watch the cloud

swirl and settle, even when I tell her milk has become precious,

don’t waste it. She doesn’t understand—to her, it is not wasted.

Meanwhile, my husband isn’t playing piano today, he is reinstalling

the shower doors and caulking, his hands eager for work after weeks

of meandering over the keys. Meanwhile, the men in yellow continue

digging up our street, day after day, week after week. I should follow

their lead for how to mine for poems now, the way we seek them out

inside ourselves with so much effort, or sometimes no effort at all,

when there is a death or a bad dream, or folding socks triggers a thought

that’s less mundane. Meanwhile, the mine seems tapped. Like today.

Day after day in lockdown. Day after day looking out at the workers

bronzed faces, their yellow vests, cigarettes dangling out of their mouths,

but even they seem to find something new to dig each day, the gravel to move,

the pipe to hoist, the dozer to scour the dust, the way my daughter

shouts for her milk in a frenzy, drinks deep of that same sour flavor

when it arrives and finds new joy in it, enough to sustain, every time.

Published in April, 2021 Mom Egg Review