Prompt: Day 9

The Party's Over...

For months we
planned and plotted,
calculated and mapped
each day, each hour
movement by moment
so to be at the east
end of the lake
at dusk or reach
the ocean at dawn.

Toes curled in sand
at Narragansett Beach
and again in excitement
on the Zip line across
the river in New York.
Anticipation of his
first step on to the
USS Constitution; agony
over whether crowds
should interfere
with that necessary photo.
Special tour of the ship:
he sky high when given
the flag that flew all morning.

Weather didn't always
cooperate. Waterfalls
in pouring rain, beach day
shrouded in clouds, but
we didn't care. Subway train
maps:a rainbow confusion
of colors and lines
but we figured it out
midst giggles and panhandlers
and a guy who played
the violin as if at Carnegie Hall.

For six months before
and seventeen days
we fulfilled dreams
a lifetime in the making.
Then it was done.
Packed the car with
souvenirs, dirty clothes,
muddy sneakers
and memories.
Configured GPS, counted change,
drove the fast, but boring, highways
home. Somehow the songs
we sang on the trip out
lost their music, jokes fell flat,
conversations went nowhere.

He would relive each day
recounting the adventures
to any and all. After the third telling
I knew the routine by heart.

For me
each recitation dimmed the color,
diluted the joy,
until there was only grey water sloshing
in the washing machine of our trip,
memories wrung dry,
and all the colors and anticipation
drained away. Like waking from
a dream, the dream faded,
moments lost in the shuffle.
Pictures used to settle arguments
of where we did that
or when or with whom.

I keep silent, because

for him
each recitation brightens the color,
enhances the joy...
wringing every nuance and moment
to puddle in dazzling brilliance at our feet.
Into which,
he jumps, with both feet,
happily splashing.