There’s Nothing Wrong with You

Dear twelve-year-old boy who eats frozen waffles three times a day while your mother makes a run for gas station chicken with every meth-shooting hard-leg in Pascagoula,

yea though I sit here choking down a po-boy with the crickets in my wisdom, triumphant and twice divorced, I wish I could write a happier poem for you.

If the water gets turned off, you can still drink from the bug-peppered oasis of your neighbor’s plastic swimming pool.

I wish it would stop raining long enough for me to throw a football with such a perfect spiral that my twelve-year-old self could catch it.