With a slight little push

With a slight little push of her plate, Vaughn leaves the table for the living room. Climbs onto the sofa, kneels, tucks her head down close to her knees, and rests her hands over her head. "Nobody loves me or likes me, I guess." This is her thing to say these days whenever she's disappointed. KC continues to feed Dash, I keep eating my leftover tuna casserole, having finished off my few pieces of leftover chicken. Vaughn wouldn't eat her leftover chicken, she wanted tuna casserole, which KC explained is going to be her supper, and so now Vaughn's on the sofa—now leaning on the top of her head, little butt sticking up in the air, peaking at us upside down through her legs as she sings, "Nobody loves me or likes me, I guess. / I'll have to do everything for myself." She repeats this dozens of times. KC and I trying not to laugh. Finally she offers some variations, such as "I'll have to do everything for myself, I guess, / because Daddy doesn't love me or like me / and because Mommy doesn't love me or like me." Oh, how could something like that not warm your heart? Finally I tell her that excusing herself and singing on the couch is a good response to disappointment, much better than pouting, whining, pushing, biting. Yeah, she's a fierce one. We invite her back to the table. She'll eat some of the chicken and have some casserole. If I were a confessional poet, I would be escaping this mundane domesticity via alcohol or amphetamines or sleeping with prostitutes, and KC would be an adulteress or an agoraphobic home-shoppig addict. But no, all I have is about a gig-and-a-half of worthless frankenverse that thoroughly avoids my biggest confession, which I guess is that every weekday I go to a job I can't stand and every day I do nothing to change that. What a waste of time to be thinking all this when I should be enjoying the moment. Suddenly everyone's on their way out of the house. Them on their way to Nana and Papa's and me on my way to work. It's a slow half-hour ride into work, the alt rock on XCI is a soothing soundtrack, leaves me drowsy as I take off my sunglasses, put on my eyeglasses, pocket my wallet and head into the office. Eight and a half hours later I step out of the office. Last night I had been struck by how the wet green ground, usually a mess of ugly broad-leafed weeds, along with the fluorescent office light shining out the tall windows seemed to conspire to make the perfect field turf. With everything that lay to the sides of the thin strip of bright green blocked out, it almost seemed like a place to lie down. To sink down. To be covered over. An easy erasing of self. Painless. But tonight nothing stands out. It's right into the Civic. Right onto the road, and the next road, and the highway, and the long state road that leads to my long road. XCI's "Folk the System" show is on. There's a woman fluttering her hands across a guitar, with and against her Billie Holiday-influenced voice. It's a sad song I can't quite judge. Makes me realize I'll always be a sentimentalist at heart. I note the "always." The language I can't escape. But when I do—