faith outside the faults

i'm not a friend of his language,

although his mother and i

fought for control of the 

tongue of it when he first

came to us;

he knew a few words,

and he looped the lips

to craft something of a

conversation with us and

members of his new family and 

we learned to be interpreters.

he stole people's

keys, poaching them

the way a boy fists

pebbles into pockets;

we scolded him out of it.

he takes a half dozen

medications as a bulwark 

against the onslaught of

invisible enemies 

launched against him at birth.

the names of his meds

are tiresome, long,

and too difficult for 

our own tongues to curl

into any sort of intelligent

noise; we sound stupid.

his mother and i have

had to pin him to the ground,

his arms above his head, his

legs crossed beneath the

weight until he calmed down.

this happens when he is

struck sideways by some

atom-quick crashing of 

competing impulses, the

origin of which we never intuit.

he has flipped me off with a 

deviated finger and told me he hated 

me; he has said i am not his father;

he has thrown a chair at his 

mother and it has ravaged drywall.

he keeps the same song on

repeat and drones the lyrics,

the sound of which is like 

a finger on the record that

drags the music down into a bog.

he clamors to succeed, but crashes

against walls and floors, into

his own fists; he bites his arms

and curses under his breath; his 

chemical imbalances tip over trees.

what he was born into we've gotten

only in meager reports, like a

fitful radio sending us dispatches

of the battlefield casualties

before going silent.

we have been called before juries

to stand and answer questions

by fools wearing the wigs of

remonstrate; our defense falling

as flat as a deflated lung.

we have slept with unease, one

ear cocked to the dead sounds of 

night to hear if the boy is up

and getting into things;

our sleep is trench-warfare sleep.

what we hoped for we dreamed

about, what we dreamed about

we cast out in a net made of

thin glass that shone in a

gorgeous flash before shattering.

we have wanted to give up,

exhausted from the pulse of

the blast that radiated outward

from the detonation of one

hundred thousand collapsing suns.

we have wept into each other's

eyes in anguish over how we failed,

wondering if the hands of the clock

cannot, in fact, be unwound and

take us back to the greenery of

more pleasant fields.

but then he will rejoin us;

but then he will ask for a hug;

but then he will kiss us when

he has never kissed us before;

but then his cloudy eyes will clear

and we will find in them - in him -

what we dreamed of dreaming,

what we dared of daring,

what we hoped to hope for:

some simple light, some affirmation

that he was where he was destined

to be, for the good of what is good,

for a life worth living, for the

purity of excellence that he deserves in the

face of all founded and unfounded obstacles.

we who venture into such denuded

land, deforested by acid chaos,

do so from some calling,

from some urge, knowing not

what is meant to be found.

the creatures discovered here (that they call 

special) dance for us to the rhythms

of deeper wells within the earth,

beneath our feet, and in tune with

lesser graces.

and we - the boy's mother and father - find

faith outside the faults of our visit here,

recognizing the vulnerability of a child's

love and how it comes with the 

expectation that we are there,

regardless of where they are and have been.

regardless.