Day Five Theme: Embarassment

ROLE REVERSAL

Relaxing at my battered coffee table

smoking a bowl from a glass pipe

on a mellow Friday afternoon--

then suddenly the door bursts open.

I startle reflexively,

dropping the bowl on the table,

wondering whether a neighbor called the cops

and if they still do that in west Aurora,

a town with a Protestant church on every block--

but it's my teen-aged daughter,

staring at me

with a look of horror on her face.

She gasps, “MOM!

What are you doing?!”

in a tone of such stunned disapproval

that I am instantly embarrassed,

and I stammer, “Why are you home?!”

“It's a half day at school” she replies

with her head turned sideways,

pointedly avoiding the coffee table

with its damning evidence

of my heinous marijuana addiction,

something I'd sworn she knew about for years.

She retreats to her room,

staring at me with a sort of terror,

mixed with with an odd sadness,

as though I was suddenly a stranger--

and I am left alone with my shame.