"Are you sitting down?" a voice on the phone asks

Watching toddlers on the sunlit stairs

with their wobbling leaps on new legs,

a boy sits at the open table next to me.

I can smell him say, "Yes, I'm sitting down now."

It's a stinking panic sweat I've known.

Yes, now, he is seated and on the phone.

This must be his freshman year, too.

'Cause I have been a freshman seated on the phone—

Look towards the kids jumping on the stairs,

testing the limits of legs, and pretend I don't know.

Don't know what the boy or the kids are going through.

But in my life, I, too, have been seated on the phone

for bad news, and I have jumped a stair or two.