When I'm Coming Home

Walter, would you please
Please just for now
Stop asking me
When I'm coming home

I told you
When he's better
When he's better
Then I'll come home

Not before
Not until
Not unless he's better

How better?

Did you really just ask me that, Walter?
Did you really just ask me
How much better our son needs to be
Before I will return home
To the castle
So that you can have clean socks again?

Let's see

When he can do his Katie Couric impression again
Or his John Updike impression
The one that doesn't make sense
When he can laugh at all
Without descending into a choking fit

Then I'll come home

When he can tango
When he's able to learn, anyway
When he can even be considered mobile

Then I'll come home

When the pain stops
And I mean all the pain
Not just the pain the drugs kill
But the pain from the blow his pride suffered
From being forty-one years old
And having to ask his mother
To brush his teeth
Because he's too weak to lift the toothbrush

When he can lift that toothbrush
Along with a fifty pound weight
Then I'll come home

When I don't have to rub his back
Every time I wake up next to him
Because he's crying in his sleep again
At least he sleeps, huh Walter?
At least there's that

When he can hold down food
When he can eat my mango pudding again
When he can eat my eggplant
When he can eat my chickpea salad
That's when I'll come home

When his eyes look at me
And don't beg me to stay
That's when I'll come home

In other words
When he's better, Walter
When our son is better
Then I'll be home

And just so you know
When I get there
The first thing I'm going to ask you
Is why you weren't here

Good-bye