NaPoWriMo 2019, Day 9

The prompt today is to write a poem in the form of a list of things.

What I Miss

My sister
when she wasn't
being mean to me,
and especially when she was
making me laugh
by saying that our panting dog
was laughing at me,

comic books when they were fun

and the smell of pulp paper when I
walked into the newsstand
which was next door
to the Dairy Queen

that had ten-cent
ice cream cones,

five and dime stores
and their lunch counters
and soda fountains,
and being excited when I saw

model kits and Batman toys
on their shelves,

my mother taking my sister and me
to movies at the local drive-in,
even though I usually ended up
falling asleep in the
back seat of the car,

the smell of a freshly opened
64-count box
of Crayola crayons,

old black and white monster movies
on Chiller Theater Saturday nights,
even though they sometimes

gave me nightmares

and made me wish that daylight

didn't seem so far away,

breakfast on Saturday mornings
in front of the television
while watching cartoons,

my grandmother
singing old songs
and speaking a mixture
of broken English and French,

calling Lorna Doone cookies

Lorne Greene cookies,
and the chicken soup
she made for me when
I was home sick from school,

stopping at the store
on summer afternoons
to buy candy bars
and packs of bubblegum cards,

and pop in glass bottles

that you could pull

fresh from the vending machine,

going to the supermarket

with my mother,

and her buying me

what I wanted

in the cereal aisle,

the welcoming quiet

and the smell of books

in the little public library

that was down the hill

from where I lived,

and the belief

that none of this

would ever end. - Jeff Barnes