Strabismus

Your umpteenth^th birthday. Pleading to candle

flames to take you along (put you out) when they

water down, and

chair legs always leaning

to tip

tumble, leave tattered little boy on his knees

(already scraped) and crawling toward

the kitchen (not his kitchen) looking for cookies,

and light,

and women,

women’s cookies.

You chew with the crumbs coating your lips.

Spewing across the slick tile,

“could you button up my shirt sleeves,”

could you,

could you?

Could I think of a reason not to (selfishness? self fulfilled prophecy?)

that would justify an abandoned infant

around sharp objects. There is no way to say.

There is no one left to say who will emerge as his savior, no one volunteers

as such, the medicine won’t pick up the telephone, and

even on the day of

the umpteenth birthday, the silence

surrounds. It only breaks itself,

whispering “we can’t fix a brain.

We can’t fix a brain because things don’t fix themselves”,

My own thinks this to be true too.