i thought i'd hang up my coat
because that’s what an adult would do,
they would come in the door and hang their coat,
they would remove their shoes and
put them exactly where they belong
and after, maybe they’d change into
a little something more comfortable before
slipping a drink into their hand, a beer,
a cocktail, a mother fucking margarita
thank you very much,
they can have it all because
they’re all grown up now, oh,
wait, I’m all grown up now,
i forget i’m supposed to be one of them,
the adults, the grown-ups,
no more kid’s table for me
no more wishbones
or the rest of the cranberry sauce,
sweet and sticky,
smeared across my careless lips
This was very, very, loosely inspired by Mary Oliver’s Freshen the Flowers, She Said, but I think it’s more that I like the titles of my poems as the first lines of my poems.
That’s a thing people do, I guess. It works.