by John Grey
There’s someone screaming in your house.
It’s the stomach cancer, you say.
Your Aunt Sophie has come to live with you.
Or die with you as the case may be.
But there’s laughter too.
Your father has come home on a Friday night
with small gifts for the youngest two.
It may just be candy. A tiny bobble-head doll.
But to reach the hand up and receive
from the tall man in blue overalls
is surely the way prayers to God are answered.
And sometimes there’s crying.
Like when the cops haul your teenage brother home.
They warn what will happen the next time.
Tears dot your mothers cheeks like sequins.
And she can’t speak for sobbing.
I’m not used to people who can’t hide
what they feel that moment.
There’s just my mother and I at home.
What we think is like sex,
never spoken of.
So to sit on the couch with you
is a trembling experiment in honesty, in exposure.
I was brought up in phony calm.
I have no sound to make.
But I hear a scream, then a laugh, then a sob.
I steal a kiss but it’s the noise that steals the silence.
