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.
