the microwave door

1990 doesn’t seem like it would have been so very long ago

but the microwave in the mud room is twenty-something, thirty years old now and

we debate whether you must slam the door

or if it is sufficient to nudge it upwards a bit

much as you might hoist your geriatric father-in-law from slouching in his nursing home chair

at his resigned request mixed with muttered self-accusatory protestations.

Perhaps carcinogenic rays will leak out of the humming steel-and-plastic box if the door is not helped up enough,

and perhaps life is not so precious

that for a bowl of soup we will not ask for just one more,

just one more

(for we are tired ourselves)

for twenty years and a bit longer —

someday we will rest

but until then we will help each other how we can,

even in small ways,

for that is our birthright.