Conclusions
There Are Days I Pray My Son Wears Condoms
I will always be broke(n)
and my husband will always be tired.
I will always be eight years
younger than him. He is never going to
add me to the deed to our house. In the end,
he will have been right not to have done so.
I will always have one ex husband, maybe two,
but I will not have three.
My dog will eventually die and I will be relieved.
I will not feel guilty.
I will always have only a handful of friends.
I will never like women, but I will always like men
even less, their thick lack of understanding,
their tendency to miss the point, certain
slants of light, their ability to stop
thinking about it and go to sleep.
My children will grow up.
They will move out and I will
be left with no one but myself. My face
will age, my weight will always be the problem
I run miles against. I will always border
on dysmorphia. I will smoke
until a stone-faced doctor tells me I have cancer.
I might cry then, facing the end, but I will meet it
head on. I will die.
My family will realize they have forgotten
what I said to do with my body and they will mourn
traditionally, knowing I would have wanted more.
I will have always wanted more.
There Are Days I Pray My Son Wears Condoms
when he is old enough to have sex.
It’s not only the new diseases that scare me,
or the new breed of robotic girls skyping
their way to popularity, but the sadder fact
that sometimes, my son is an asshole. I see
his father staring back at me from behind
those squinting eyes, scrutinizing, judging,
never letting me down easy when I screw up,
never seeing the forest for trees he would
rather cut down than climb. Eleven years
leaves a long road ahead, paved
with opportunities for needing mercy,
bridges to burn because he was born
with fire raging in his head.
Recently nominated for two Pushcart awards, April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is currently working on a memoir on raising a child with autism and several collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in journals such as Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle. The author also serves as co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press (www.kindofahurricanepress.com).
