pictured words

Don’t Ask Me How

there are things my brain knows,
but doesn’t tell me.

Or maybe there is a disconnect
between this side of my brain
and the other side.

Like years ago
when I helped a friend bake
potato chip cookies
to take to my cousin later that night.
Somewhere, my brain knew he was
getting work training on the other side
of the country.
But not the part of my brain
helping my friend bake.  That part
might as well have been with my cousin
on the other side of the country.

Or that time in the shower
an hour ago
when I was thinking about
hosting Christmas Eve,
praying the weather holds out
and guests are safe in travel.  Praying
for these guests that are my family –
my daughter and her family
my cousins and their grown kids
and their little children

and the sudden slap of that’s all.

No grandparents.  No aunts and uncles.
No parents. 

Now, that’s us. 

My brain knows this.
It intimately knows this information
that it didn’t share with me
until the shower started searching
for tears.

Don’t ask me how.

© Marie Elena Good, 2022