In preschool every Friday
we would be given these large blocks
of ice with plastic cows frozen
captive within to chip away at and free with small
hammers. I would wake up every Friday morning
excitedly positive of my purpose.
The farther away I float from my umbilical cord my purpose
grows weaker. I’m too exhausted to awake excited on Fridays
now the light of the morning
greets me like mosquito too quick to block
from sucking at my flesh. Small
clown fish that used to dance for me have frozen.
The day after my mother died my heart finally froze
and I didn’t have a small hammer to excavate from it the purpose
of why. The small
plastic cows stampeded painfully in my chest that Friday
and haven’t stopped since. I need a child to block
their hooves and break them out on an excited Friday morning.
Sometimes the milk man stops by in the early morning
brings me jugs of milk that sometimes have frozen
curds within. I don’t mind, because although he delivers at every block
and every house he purposefully
makes mine his last stop on Fridays.
I think I could fall in love with this milkman he makes me feel less small.
Today I awoke to the doorbell being rung repeatedly by a small
girl and as she sold me double sugared coconut crisps at seven in the morning
I remembered that it was a Friday
and I stared at her mother as a tear fell and melted my frozen
porch step. She held her baby’s hand as they skidded with excited purpose
towards next door past my milkman down the block.
And as the milkman came strolling down the block
I closed my door behind the girl and her mother and curled in a small
fetal position on the cold tile as I purposefully
ignored his soft polite knocking and ate the cookies at seven fifteen in the morning
and I felt like a plastic frozen
cow waiting to be freed from a cavernous heart that Friday
Sometimes I stick blueberries in my ice tray in the morning
they’re small but they make my water taste like a frozen
smoothie. Sometimes I purposefully excavate them. Soothes my heart on Fridays.