Where does a sneeze go when you don't sneeze?
Just like a hurricane in my nose
but loses wind and just won't go.
Where did my sneeze go?
Its not up high
and its not down low.

Maybe my sneeze got lost,
doesn't know where to go anymore.
Maybe my sneeze got tired,
resting in a big box of cardboard.
Maybe my sneeze got tossed,
down the river washed up on shore.
Maybe my sneeze just retired,
restless on the dance floor.

Ive lost my sneeze
I put posters everywhere,
Ive lost my sneeze
I can't find them anywhere.

One day that sneezed found me
Not one, not two, but three.

If happiness is a look,
It will be a smile on my child face
If happiness is a sound,
It will be the laughter of my child voice
If happiness is a feel,
It will be the touch of my child on me
If happiness is a taste,
It will be sharing bowl of food with my child
If happiness is a smell,
It will be the smell of my child smelly hair

My children's, A and N, you have saved me more then you will ever know.
I love you.


PS, same with the wife, with all the struggles and up and downs, we learn as we go.

Angel's heed
Master the vice, we sow in a due language?
Set to rights, and kept in eaves
Wasn't a friend to liberate, the eyes of an entourage?

Western courage's
The taste of tones of voice, a ply's tongue?
Able to remain in light, the irony which lingers...
Have is a calmer today, now in demand, among

Commands and irregularity's stones
In the hands of futures with a need, anon
Since, to wealth in named loans...
Of passions redoubt, the deed of love, is coming...

Open airs of motive and suggestion
Made for a like and wisdom of values, we took
To unrest for a need to be, a morality in lessons...?
That began here in our hands, and ended with a look...

Of subtlety and a rosy forecast
The modesty of requiem, the taste of harmony
Is a relationship with ideology, which in your hap
Is a caught sense of poise, that assumes youth is won't...

The call of the home, directions of duty, done
Avid to legends meteoric advance on poignancy, evoked
The truth in long rays of sunshine and the voice of what was
A day for sincerity to sit in the sight, of what was, our hope...

Who is that on yonder trellis
Oh my gosh it's Little Ellis,
Climbing higher, hand over hand
Chasing something? nothing planned.

Perhaps he saw a shooting star
Or a will'-o-the wisp somewhere afar,
Regardless, Mother where were you?
When Ellis decided what to do.

When Ellis reached the top of the trellis
I think he said, “Hey, look at me fellas”,
And then he waited till his Momma could see
Knowing she will be proud of me

Momma came looking for Little Ellis
At first relaxed and then over zealous,
Running in circles, bordering on frantic
As her worries and fears became gigantic.

Then she heard a giggle, a **** and a burp
Over her head like a little bird chirp,
Raising her eyes upwards toward the skies
Little Ellis on the Trellis
Yelling, “Momma, surprise!”

Take me to the days where we laid ourselves down in the grass
And you smiled at me like I was the only person who mattered
Before any of the suffering blossomed colorfully on the surface
We would talk for countless hours that felt like mere minutes
My favorite memories of growing up all have you
You made me into a woman
You will always be the one who held my heart first

I remember nothing of my childhood.
I just remember red. I
remember mum crying in my arms when i was 8.
I remember you- not a lot.
I only remember those last moments.
The ***** running down your legs. I remember the knot on the bed but not your face.
I remember becoming the family therapist after that. I remember all the times I had to grow up before I was 10.
I remember what was suppose to be my childhood.
But I never got to have one.
Once our sister was old enough to remember I wanted to save her but now when i look at her and what she does I'm sure I failed her too. But someone who is 10 should not be raising her sister.
She grew up never knowing you.
I grew up even faster after losing you.
It's selfish i know to want you here to take some of the responsibility away from me. So that I don't have to deal with mums stress seizures alone. Or raising our sister. Because if you were here we would have a childhood.
And i could lean on you, just like you could have always leaned on me. I wish you were still alive.
you are the only other person has has gone through loosing her too. But you instead saw what she did as a lesson to learn not something to avoid, I hate you for killing yourself when I needed you the most. I hate you for not ******* talking to me and leaning on me. but we were kids. you never got to grow up. So I did it for both of us and started early.
I can't really remember my childhood.
And could really use the memory of ours right about now.
Even if it never happened.

Another college tour, another favor. This time it was an old schoolmate, George and his parents who were taking the official tour. I was going to babysit his little sister Mary (5) while they walked around.

It was good to see someone from home and sad in a way. For a moment, I had a tugging feeling, like there was a hook deep inside me and the reel was back home.

When I first saw George I remembered a time, in 10th grade, before COVID. I was leaving school early and waiting to be picked up. Twenty track boys, fresh from their daily run, were lounging, seductively around. George, in particular, in a pose rather like Michelangelo’s Adam. “***!” I remember thinking at the time.

I smiled at that long-ago tableau. “What?” George asked, he was watching me. “Nothing,” I smiled, “Just looking forward to babysitting”

Mary and I exercised to a video, had a pizza delivered and colored - crayons aren’t easy to find in the modern college environment so we used high-lighters to create delicate, watercolor-like masterpieces.

As we drew, Mary said, off-handedly, “You’re really nice,” as if the nature of my character had been in some dispute. Still, I still felt warmly complemented.

When the tour was over, we were walking up science hill toward their car and the sun was declining to sunset. “How do you like it,” George asked, confidentially, head lowered, voice low enough not to be overheard by his parents who were walking a few yards behind us with Mary. “There’s a LOT of reading,” I said, shruggingly. “but I’m keeping up.” Last year I was a junior, this year I’m in college. It seemed absurd.

How do you conjure a vision for someone of what college would be like, when college experiences are so individual? The writer's dilemma, interpreted by a babysitter.

As we reached their car, the caroling bells started ringing (5pm) from Harkness Tower.  It was the perfect send-off. Again I felt the pull of homesickness but my phone plinked and the emotion didn’t even last as long as dusk.