He Said
Posted by Marion Smallwood | Filed under Poetry, Print
there’s an X over his lips,
right over his word-search mouth.
we’re all waiting for him
to circle the letters
instead of scratch them out,
to highlight the diagonals he’s missing
and to realize that the most obvious ones
are right along the edges
of his square puzzle tongue–
they’re just backwards.
he’s old enough to speak
but his voice is jumbled into giggles
bouncing around the whites of his teeth
and squeezing into awkward screams
and high-pitched pleas.
He’s hungry.
but i can’t quite put my finger on him
before first discovering that
his pamper isn’t full
he’s not tired or scared or hurt
and I don’t know what he needs
because
he just ate.
and sometimes I can’t help but
ignore him;
this two-year-old action movie
dressed as a silent film.
i went home to see him
a few days ago.
I still can’t believe
how big he was,
playing with two years siting in his corners,
in time-out until March 13th,
parading inches and shoe sizes
because he’s not going to be as short as life is.
there were blue moons
orbiting his eyes
taking turns shining
between blinks and smiles.
his dimples–
the only punctuation preventing
the spread of his lips
from being a run-on
into the rest of his face.
He was different.
sorted out into a few neon covered
horizontal, vertical
diagonal and backwards letters
with the faintest scar
of an X over his lips,
right over his word search mouth–
“I love you,” he said.
