What She Was Doing At Home by Naomi Shihab Nye
This one’s for all the older siblings out there…
What She Was Doing At Home
By Naomi Shihab Nye
School was like a ship they
sent you away upon.
—Michael Burkard
The baby was there—unfair.
I knew whatever she was doing
had fluted edges, a cinnamon center.
I knew she placed snipped rounds of waxed paper
between layers of cookies in the tin.
And I was missing it,
missing everything.
As far away as the monkey
in a rocket.
After school, when I tried to swim back
into her day, she had left it already.
She was washing up on the shores of dinner,
wearing a cool rag pressed between her eyes.
