A Poem from April Salzano

Future Perfect

The call to admit you are using again and out

of money your parents’ house a job town

and options will always come when I am out

of child support when bills are due and I am fresh

out of ideas and food and patience. You will always

ask me to call Domestics tomorrow and tell them

you paid in cash even though you didn’t

so they won’t take your driver’s license,

though you don’t need it because you are

in New York with the only friend

you have left. And I will always

answer that I can’t help you, which you will

already know, but you will call anyway.

You will say you are clean and trying

to rebuild your life. And I will

say that you’ve been saying that for two and a half years

now, and then you’ll stop seeing the kids, and I’ll say

I don’t care anyway and they are better off without you

and I will mean that but when I am tired

and out of patience I am more likely to believe

you are clean again and they will

spend one night and I will inhale and exhale

one good deep breath before I question my own judgment

but by that time they will be home again because you

will have called to say they want to come back now

and maybe that will be true. Two weeks will go by

and maybe a doctor’s appointment a report card a soccer game

another mortgage payment the hope of another deep breath

before you will call again to say you have left

town went to rehab or New York or Wisconsin or Hell

and I will probably pause what I am doing for just

a second and I might cry a little but more out of frustration

than pity but it will be the middle of the month again

and time to put the kids to bed so I will

put off thinking about it until you

call again to say you aren’t picking them up

this weekend or the next and I will have already

told myself that eventually it will all stop. And it will.


 April Salzano teaches writing at Westminster College. She has published poetry in several online and print journals and is currently working on her first collection of poems and an autobiographical novel on raising a son with Autism, if the beauty and pain allow articulation.