Author Bret Hoveskeland

*Another oldie taken from The Oxytocin Opera, celebrating 12 years this week. A good one to honor Mother’s Day too. Enjoy and hug the mothers in your life this weekend!*

Blip on a Black and White Screen

So there you are.
Hiding in plain sight. 
Peeking out from a computer monitor.
Playing hide-and-seek already.
Flashing your existence in the steady, persistent rhythm of a single blip.
Your first words have no sound.
And my life as I've known it, as the saying goes,
won't be quite the same ever again.
The monitor mirrors the beats of your sheet music.
A perfect metronome for your newly written symphony.

There will be days ahead, I know
Where worry wells up and sticks like fresh paint on the walls of your room.
What color will they be?
What colors will you decide to paint our world?
I know my own walls have become pretty tarnished.
I know some days, when the light hits it just so, 
the grey tones look like a Midwest winter sunset
sinking behind the sky's wall of clouds the color of April snow in ditches.
Like the funny way everything natural worth watching in the world
Is harder to look away from when part of it is hidden.

I have never known a lunch break away from the office
to have changed the rules of life
faster than this monitor has by being switched on.
Standing in my wrinkled slacks and uncomfortable 
shoes, I never knew I could be
both so small and huge as your only world
trapped in black and white, etched in dots per inch.

One day coming so soon,
We are going to say hello.
And those two syllables will ring on
until my voice has no more sound.