By Jenna Brack
@jennabrackwriting

Her kids splash in the pool,
background noise of a steamy day.
She stops—breaks up a sibling argument—
returns to our chat about therapy,
schooling options, the grinds and joys of marriage,
places we’ve been or arrived or returned,
where we’ve stopped going
or wish we hadn’t gone at all.
Once you said—
she begins, and I cringe,
wondering what unruly wisdom
I offered fifteen years ago,
years that feel both real and imagined,
merely a ripple of time standing between
days when our futures felt distant,
majestic as mountain ranges,
when we thought we knew,
before we understood our adult lives hid
around the corner,
parenting teens and pre-teens
elementary schoolers and preschoolers all at once
mixing the past and present seamlessly
while calling out to younger lives,
Do not jump like that in the pool!
On a basketball court, I play pickleball
with my son, who laughs
as he calls me old.
Every day, a creative way to remind me—
90’s music is now oldies, he says,
and I act horrified (I am horrified),
but I don’t say (I want to say):
just across a thin slice of time,
no wider than this imaginary net,
you will call out to a younger life
and wonder how they feel so close,
and also how they slipped
so far away.

Poem written by Jenna Brack. Jenna is a writer, teacher, and celebrator of the arts. Her creative work has appeared in Fathom, Every Day Poems, The Sunlight Press, Mothers Always Write, and others. You can connect with her on Instagram and read her occasional musings on Substack.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.