ODE TO BREAKFAST
Wes Westfall
Eventually the daylight finds my window and stands on my sill like a damn fool, babbling on and on about brightness and warmth, until it has filled the room with its nonsense, and the air gets hot and the flies wake up and buzz in my ear and walk across my face. By 9:00 a.m. I am defeated and drawn from my bed like a mummy from its tomb to stumble through the B grade movie of my life. Few things in this day will be as agreeable and satisfying as my bowl of Grape-nuts. Noble dish, you never forsake me, or make demands of me, or ask me to listen to your problems, break ap¬pointments, criticize my poetry or the way I dress, or care if I dress at all, or look at me as though you are thinking something you would rather not tell me, or break my complacency by being so pretty that my feeble mind wastes hours thinking of the right phrases to ask you to the movies and then remem¬bers that if you say yes it would have to think of things to say for an entire evening, nor do you ever ask me what my major is or what I plan to do after college, or leak oil, or heave sighs of disgust in my direction, or pull my beard, establish deadlines, remind me to clean the house, crap in my yard, develop expectations, spoil on the back shelf of my refrigerator, or drive like a chim¬panzee. You only wait patiently in my cupboard, caress my bowl, settle in my milk, and crunch just like Euell said you would.
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