First Day Of Kindergarten

The bus steps are high, but William clambers up gamely.
Doors shut. He peers out a print-marked window.
From the street corner, I wave, wistful as a soldier’s bride
as his bus pulls away and turns a corner.

At noon the yellow bus returns him
to the same place where I’m standing again.
He thinks I stood there all day, waiting in his absence.
When he finds out I left to play tennis,

his forehead crumples like paper in a wastebasket.
Now he knows I can move on my own without him.
Tears drawn from the well of desertion form in his eyes.
I’m his first love and his greatest disappointment.