The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Certain Shelter by Abbie Kiefer

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Resolutions

I’ve been thinking I should lighten up
a little. Let our boys go barefoot
in the soupy pool shower room.
At three in the morning, resist
waking them to search
their armpits for ticks. Watch them leap
from the top of the tire swing and not wince
or warn. Forget my childhood home,
its tidy basement bleeding radon,
my mom’s lungs turned wet
and treacherous. Forget those lungs
and your lungs. All the cigarettes
you smoked in college.
Ignore the narrowness
of your bike lane, the greedy bite
of your chainsaw, the small and shrinking
difference between your age now
and the age of your dad when he died.
Stop calculating: If I were the one to die,
could you afford a good sitter? Someone
who would find adventures—
streams and boulders, trees for climbing.
Who would urge our boys with all the ease
I lacked: Go. Yes, go. What’s the worst
that can happen?

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