It’s not a mistake, that comma.
Just like the pause I made
When he asked me
if I had something I wanted to
to ask him. And I did,
but I dared not.
Or the break in the silence
when someone coughs,
clears his throat,
swallows hard because
the silence nearly gags
him.
Or the stillness when one
goes from sleeping to wakefulness,
the change in the breathing
that clues us that consciousness
has returned, albeit fuzzy.
So the what, the thing that
makes me pause, is the day.
Today.
We woke to inaugural parades,
Blanco’s “One Today,”
(He knows the relevance
even for the toddler who will
not remember the day, but
will for her entire life think
she does because her parents
and her teachers will make remarks
about a date when she was alive
and she’ll think she had something
to do with it–and she will have,
but not in the way she thinks.
And that today,
is what I mean.
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