First Day of Kindergarten

The bus steps are high, but William clambers up gamely. Doors shut. He peers out a print-marked window. From the street corner, I wave, wistful as a soldier’s bride as his bus pulls away and turns a corner. At noon the yellow bus returns him to the same place where I’m standing again. He thinks I stood there all day, waiting in his absence. When he finds out I left to play tennis, his forehead crumples like paper in a wastebasket. Now he knows I can move on my own without him. Tears drawn from the well of desertion form in his eyes. I’m his first love and his greatest disappointment.