With The Drop Of A Cup

Zoe can’t help chasing Daddy. Days commence, shooting starting pistol, thundering out of door frames, snapping seat-belts, braids bowed by sticky thumb-nails. Daddy two-steps ahead, two-words before Zoe can say “Goo’moaning,” he’s packing saddle-bags, cuts a whole-wheat crust, then bang-flashes, gone, behind pillar smoke reappearing seated, buckled, a lovely volunteer seated, buckled, two-feet behind him. - At the gymnasium, the pursuit begins anew, as Daddy rips Zoe from shackles, plopping pink-velcro’s, floating into MEN’s room; hanging in leotard straps, hands fly to catch ear-wrinkles, whiskers, milky whites, Rats! Tiny hands, crippled by youth, he should be ours by now. Hanging-carrot, now half-reflection, dangling defiance to summersaulting Zoe. - Each abrupt halt of the thin hand, a slow gravity’s pull further towards door-frames and seat-belts, ‘til trap doors drop the pair, swirling to a window seat at St. Paul’s Crowded Espresso Cafe, where we order, eyes forward, signs read Permit Not To Speak Across Fellow Morning Drinker. - Not a finish line, Daddy’s tire change, throwing to Zoe meteoric fragments of cran-apple biscotti stone. Sweeping off the cereal dust, to the door-frame he flees again, but Zoe raises above wet nostrils, a paper cup, filled to the brim, “Daddy, is this trash?” - Zoe drops a pair of burning palms, coffee puddled under tears. Daddy comes with tree trunk arms, lifting high his champion sprinter. No medals awarded, tho’ she has won again; tripped again by the snare of weeping toddler’s glance.