Matter

My older son is looking

For the quotient,

Because he is doing math

And it is a problem

Of division,

And I tell him how the total

Number can be divided into

Parts

And how, sometimes, sometimes

There is a remainder.

And I am thinking about my husband

Who is gone, deployed, to Afghanistan,

A country where men and women and

Children and roads and bombs and the

Risk of getting killed or having to kill is

Added together and the danger

Is multiplied.

And I only tell my children parts,

How he flew on a military cargo

Airplane to Turkey and then to

Kabul, how he slept on a bunk

In a transient berthing station

On a base next to the airport

And how, how I don’t say the

Other parts,

How I have not heard from him

In over two days,

Or how the airport is where

Three men were shot,

Dead,

Last week,

By a man wearing the uniform

Of the Afghan National Army.

And my younger son can only

Say a few words

Even though he is five years old.

And he is saying hello and daddy’s car

Because he cannot say anything else

And because the driveway is half empty.

Now it is night

And this day is

Already splitting

Into tomorrow

And my children

Are asleep or how

What they know is

Only a part of what

The world will teach them,

And I am standing, here, in

This hallway watching them,

And their bodies are still and

Alive and whole,

Like atoms,

How they are the smallest

Units of matter, how they

Are the smallest units that

Matter.

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