She gave you the names of things,
each word, a candle
you held between yourself and the dark.
The litany of the alphabet
like a rosary before sleep.
Then the shadows on the wall
became familiar,
the storybook shape of elephants.
Mornings she took in laundry,
arms buried in suds,
her sleeves rolled up like a man.
She had no use for singing.
What she did, she did
because of you,
her last wish granted:
the midnight birth,
a boy without a breath that wasn’t her own.
You were the center of her brisk movements,
the point between the porch and the tree,
the smallest insistence of color.
Your small frame, remote
as a sundial, was obedient
noon without shadow.
In a starched white shirt of silence,
you longed for a river:
a boy with a stick and a dog.
Beside the green water of the ditch,
the tall grass hid the white waxy flower.
The nights were cool and filled with its smell,
the nights you leaned out as if to test the wind,
scattering breadcrumbs,
a promise of wheat
But the wind was never right.
What was it like
to lie down in the ditch,
your head on that hard pillow,
to hear the sound of the work
she made for herself,
the stubborn light of her window,
a burning hole she stitched in the night?
You were the one she called Andrew,
handsome and true,
the boy she called home to supper,
wiping his shoes
before a feast of fruit and flowers.
The one in the photograph
standing next to her,
winged-collar of an angel,
his hand on her sleeve,
tethered there
beside the straight-backed chair.
Guilt is a halo of silence,
the white clean shirt you wore.
You are the boy standing next to her,
the one who would never leave.
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