I told you this was a poem

I told you this was a poem
when you asked why I was crying.

You sat on my lap,
counting the syllables on your fingers,
hoping to keep its rhythm with your palms.

You’ll read this again
when you’re older,
searching for a reason and finding no rhyme.

I told your mother this was a memoir,
but she didn’t know I was starting with the end.

Amanda was in the kitchen. Chopping and stirring and waiting for it all to bubble to the surface. She knew Isaac was taking it hard. He was the strong, silent type, growing less strong and more silent as the months went by. Now, he was weak and mute and refusing to move on.

The blade nicked the inside of her thumb. She bled onto the counter and on the carrots and all over her favorite apron. She quickly cleaned it up and got on with making dinner. That’s what she did. She got on with things.

“A quarter less but a tenth as joyful,” she mumbled to herself. Contemplating the strange recipe of broken homes.

“Is that from one of your poems?” Kayla asked, hoisting her little body onto a stool and stealing a piece of celery.

Amanda hadn’t written in nearly a year. Not for lack of emotion. Perhaps for the opposite. “Umm. Yes, dear.”

“Does it rhyme?” Kayla preferred limericks; her brother had liked haikus.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Then I don’t want to hear it.” Kayla was growing sick of the sadness. What’s the fun of having writers as parents if they only write boring stuff? Her mother used to tell stories about basilisks and gnomes and castles under volcanoes. She even named one of the faeries Kayla. And Alex...Alex was the boy who lived forever. Now, she only turns the light off and says goodnight. Even the wishing of tight sleeps and the warding off of bed bugs were a thing of the past.

“Not everything is fun all the time. How have you not learned that yet? After everything? You’re almost eight years old, for Christ’s sake.” It was as if someone else had yelled at her daughter. Perhaps she was someone else. Or perhaps she wasn’t anyone at all. Whoever she was, she took a deep breath and got on with things. That’s what she did. She got on with things while Isaac sulked in his study.

I told your mother it was for safety,
and kept it with the deed and the will and my grandfather’s watch.

The year Longfellow published 'Evangeline.'
I should have known he’d know.

I’d like to think this is poetic.
That what I’m about to do…
rhymes.

Maybe an elegiac couplet:
the father having six feet;
the son having five.

Or maybe it’s just an elegy.
Or maybe I’m just a fool.

I told you this was a poem
when you asked why I was crying.

But I think you knew it wasn’t.
It's just a reason without a rhyme.