April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania and is working on her first (several) poetry collections and an autobiographical work on raising a child with Autism. Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Pyrokinection, Convergence, Ascent Aspiration, Deadsnakes, The Rainbow Rose and other online and print journals and is forthcoming in Inclement, Poetry Quarterly and Bluestem.
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First Bus Ride
I will tell you later that it happened
by default, that I was in no way prepared
to send you off alone. I will say that
I cried as the exhaust
cloud dissipated, and long after. That
you were probably through with circle
time before I stepped back from
my ledge and drove myself to the safety
of the coffee shop where public eyes,
anonymous, welcomed me with shots
of espresso. Someday I will share
with you the feeling of nostalgia
for a summer that ended before I was
ready to hand you over to teachers
and their aides from whom I only expected
the worst. I will explain maternal
instinct and fear as if you do not
hold your own eidetic images of such concepts
in the space of your mind, a place
so complex none of us can begin
to translate it into manageable
cause/effect behavior. I might paint
a visual, you with the brand new
backpack and tennis shoes, walking
across the street, up the steps, a journey
to first grade. I will show you the picture
I took that morning, your brother guiding
you, his charge, though both of you
will have outgrown the small space
of that photograph’s frame, and neither
of you will recognize those two little boys.
I may even speak
of pride and the nature of memory. How
it colors everything it touches
with a different light, what a camera cannot
catch. I suspect you will look at me
and say you knew that already,
that I have told you before.