discordant refrain

I wish she’d sing a song. Hum a tune, so the mind would flit mindlessly along. So follies could be sung about and forgotten. Flaws romanticized like for a rock star, or dead friend.
I wish she wouldn’t watch the tick of the clock so. Instead, smile at the faces it seemed to make.
I wish all the gibberish I garbled would make her giggle, till tears rolled down her eyes, as she repeated the babble in keywords, in a voice squeaky from the laughter, between intakes of air, between chuckles.
I wish she’d swing the kitchen rag at me in mock violence, and quickly ask me to wash my face to wipe off the "germs".
When I fall asleep open-mouthed, she now forgets to put a raisin in there, and say, "See… the goat has gone No.2 in the cave. Close the door." But yes, she still remembers to let me lounge in bed till 8 a.m. because I worked on a report till 3 a.m. I love how she offers to make me coffee before listing the day’s chores out.
But I wish she’d turn off the silencing radio, and go falsetto as she dressed for work, as her man turned another page of the newspaper and sang tenor from the bathroom. They’d ignore that I was trying to speak into the phone over the din, and urge me to croon along. "Let’s make a family song that we can sing to each other if we were lost in a Kumbh mela…" she would suggest. And we’d grin to teethy glory.
I wish she'd sing a song of lyrical errors, sweet because overridden by tune.
I wish she’d unfurrow her eyebrows. Pace less. And laugh. More.