By Karen Pittelman
Each day you return with
terrible news of the world,
hoping only to slip home
unseen.
And even our locked front door
is never locked enough,
you startle
at my softest palm,
watch windows in your sleep.
I know you would build me a cabin
of hard pine and cedar, lined with
the sweet dust milk crates of
our parent’s LPs.
I just don’t know if there will ever be land
to build it on.
I tell myself turn oleander,
learn to bloom with menace
instead of this
indiscriminate garden weed,
Useless to you in the wilderness,
wooden nickel when
you need
a weapon, a tool.
Did I waste my wish on being heard?
What if this chord,
this tin can drum,
what if this song in our lungs,
What if it is instead
the silence
that will save us?