Sestina

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.