Saturday doesn’t show up smiling.
It comes grinning like a wolf,
collecting all the half-finished jobs and promises
I left scattered Monday through Friday.
The weight of them lands on me
the moment I wake.
There’s this strange pressure to make Saturday count.
Not quite work, not quite rest,
more like a holding pen for guilt.
I wash the truck,
shuffle through emails,
pretend I’m organizing instead of just hiding things better.
Even the grocery store feels like confession—
all of us waiting in line,
paying penance for not planning meals sooner.
My clothes don’t really change.
Jeans are jeans—weekday or weekend.
The shirts shift a little:
button-downs during the week,
t-shirts on Saturday,
same cut, different message,
usually softened to speak quieter.
The boots though?
Always the same.
They’ve walked me across jobsites,
through kitchens,
down aisles,
and over thresholds that didn’t always hold.
My dad always worked Saturdays.
That was a fact, a given.
I tried to bargain with it,
two-thirds of a day,
one-third of the time,
like math could make me innocent.
And maybe that was enough.
Or maybe it was just another way
to silence the voice I inherited,
the one that thinks rest is a sin.
For my son, though, it’s different.
Work doesn’t look like mine,
doesn’t look like my dad’s either.
It’s blurred out—laptops, ideas,
the labor of figuring out
what labor even means.
I don’t know if that’s easier or harder.
By evening, I’m just crossing things off the list
so I can feel like I’ve earned tomorrow.
That’s the deal I’ve made with myself:
finish enough today
so I can sit still on Sunday
without hearing my father’s boots.
BB Grey--musings 
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