My son does not have a lot of language, and
His older brother finds me in the laundry room,
Taking wet clothes out of the washing machine,
The arms and hearts of our shirts heavy, because
He is asking me, asking, when will he talk to me
And I tell him all the right things,
How his brother is talking, trying to anyway,
How every day there is another word, or how
Soon his words will string together,
Into the sentence he wants to hear.
How when they do, he can wear them,
His brother’s sentences, on his wrist
Like bracelets.
And I take him upstairs,
Where his brother is sleeping, and I show him,
What he already knows, how to listen, how to
Press his head against his brother’s head, and
Hear his words circulating inside his skull,
Like a shell, and
Later, when we are in bed, and it is
Dark, my husband asks me, what,
What is it, and I say, nothing,
Not because I don’t know, but
Because I just don’t want to talk about it,
About the things I don’t tell my sons, how
The world is not as good as I say it is,
How I have seen a photograph of a boy,
Sitting in the back of a pickup truck, next
To the dead bodies of his family, and how
There are children who are soldiers, who
Wear bombs and ride bicycles and blow
Themselves up, how sometimes words
Mean nothing.