"Teacher."

Oatmeal every morning
Clean up the floor if it's dirty
Laundry is a happy task
Remake the bed if it's misshapen
And leave for school
Forty-five minutes early

Like the pin ball in a machine
there's only so many options
of what to do, where to roll
the highest score recorded
how fast to accelerate
from the starting point

but faced with mortality
and something that might come to an end
sea salt on my face
seems like a pleasant vacation
from pin ball machines and routines
look up at gulls and feel down into sand

And the beached jellyfish in Mexico
Or the tourist crowds of Hawai'i
Maybe with Mom, building castles with my brother
Or watching your cousin tan like a cookie
to golden brown?

a private place that would be hard
for others to find and others to seek
where we could go and smell the wind
watch the crashing waves rock back and forth
without any danger of drowning.