This is Not

I dropped my boys off at school this morning.

They rushed out, swept into the sea of moving bodies.

A train came, slowing my path home. The 7:27 that bothers me every time.

Still, three minutes later I was home.

I pulled into my driveway and stared at my small brick house trying to picture it, one year from now, my oldest gone.

Four years from now,
with only my husband and me in it.

Where is the time where little children roamed the rooms,
drew on chalkboards,
made stick puppets,
cuddled safely in my arms?

Where is the woman with babies, with toddlers, with children rushed to baseball games, tennis lessons, piano?

Where are the pancakes and Big Book of Trains and boys in the snowman pajamas?

How are so many meet-the-teacher nights gone?

Whose house will this be, with no small boys to tuck in?
To teach to be brave?
To set free?

Whose house will this be, if I am the mother of these boys
and these boys are
gone?

This house is not me
without them.

This is not a house.

N'est pas un pipe.

- gae