Generalized Anxiety Works Quietly While I Try to Sign a Form

for a fundraiser, in a weirdly warm spring,

they tell me how the kids are going to sell snacks.

But really it’s us. There’s stuff I have to fill out

in the registration tent when I notice,

the big maple’s not healthy.

From the top down, there’s an early withering,

abscised green leaves with black dots.

What if it all blows away.

What if someone steals the petty cash.

When is it all due. When will it be delivered.

The other parents understand but I don’t.

I see that I cannot sell snacks I am sorry.

Other adults knew where to sign.

Is there a book about it? Is there fungus in the pith?

What if I die from the top down.

Would anyone clip my kid’s toenails,

turn the heat down at night,

smell the things shoved to back of the fridge

before serving? I filled out the wrong lines.

I wrote the wrong year. How come there’s never money?

Now they’re all walking like it’s nothing, talking.

I’m burning up. I think the maple won’t make it.

Take my coat. Does anyone see that tree,

it’s what we need, I said, I need a new form,

a blank line, a better pen, a fresh start.

You need to notice that tree. Even our own

lungs’ capillaries look

like blossoming branches

of mature oaks, yet,

O— the expirations, the fungus,

the annoying balmy rain-snow,

the dried-up pens

Molly Sturdevant is a copy editor and writer, whose prose and poems have appeared in Orion Magazine, The Dark Mountain Project, The Nashville Review, Little Patuxent Review, Poetry Northwest, Newfound, About Place Journal, x-r-a-y LitMag, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel based on research in trade-union archives. She lives in the Midwest.