Pay No Mind

Pay no mind to the muggy air sitting on the window sill, 

The mold growing under the kitchen sink, finches chirping 

On the feeder or the decades-old rice piled inside the sugar bowl.

Do not let it creep into your brain, filling crevices you swore

You’d never squeeze into again. 

Pay no mind when that pompous air hops off the window sill, 

Sits on your lap, plays with your hair and blows its foul breath 

In your face. It intrudes on your conversation about sweaters

Purchased for a dollar at flea markets, French cheeses 

And dead or dying relatives. 

Pay no mind when your grandmother exhausts her mental rolodex

And it starts rocking anxiously, back and forth on your lap.

As you move into the living room, catch the framed photos it swipes 

Off the end tables. Preserve images of your mother when she was 

Young, vibrant, warm. 

Pay no mind to documents stuffed in a cardboard envelope on the couch. 

When that cruel air billows the pages, unearthing post-its, letters,  

An email you didn’t know existed between your mother and grandmother

About you, do not cry at the revelations you find 

In the twenty-seventh paragraph.

But on the off chance that you do, try to heed those three useless words

Your grandmother chanted throughout the day. And when that does no good

Re-read and breathe your mother’s seething Times New Roman

About how your life has remained as unimpressive at age twenty 

As at birth, age four, age seventeen. 

When the air tires of this exhausting game, scurrying like a rat out the window,

Remember that every generation critiques the next. Someone always leaves

The window open, and that stupid air will always blow through 

Your grandmother’s house and every other place you go. For gusts like these

Rush fiercely, unexpectedly through our lives and leave only the aftermath.