At the dining room table, I comment on and grade papers. I start early, before breakfast. Then breakfast goes by. I am still grading papers. I am still in my pajamas.
Grace wants to get dressed and start the day and do something. She can’t. “Mama, put your clothes on. I don’t feel comfortable when I’m dressed and you’re not.”
<Sigh> “Okay,” I say and get up and change into pants and a t-shirt. I go back to the dining room table and the papers. Grace gets dressed.
Jimmy asks, “What’s that about?”
I answer, “Oh, she’s so permeable.”
He says, “You mean co-dependent?”
“I’m sticking with permeable,” I say and smile.
leaf stitch word 
Let me be the first to tell you that this is like a Frank O’Hara poem. Did you do that on purpose?
Thank you for the compliment! It inspires me to revisit his work, which, honestly, I don’t know very well.
The only decision I made, as I started writing this, was to say only just enough to establish the scene for the tomato/tomahto language (codependency/permeability) and then to get out. So, perhaps plainness can have unintentional poetry to it.