The Box

The boy strokes the night like a palm gliding over the sheath.
The blade of a man like a tree bent towards a light.
The strokes of a psalm passingly written on a sheaf of papers.
Once, the boy finger-painted the beheading of his mother.
To dip the finger in the red mirror, it is a messy art.
Smearing the red in an oval, the eyes two quick blotches of the thumb.
The frown, one persistent stroke.
The head scattered across the white plane.
The body, only the red outline of a skirt.
When his mother found the art, she did sit him down.
And she did accost him.
She did, as if sternly speaking to a vase she sat on the shelf.
That time, she could not knock him.
Though the transience of memory slowly slid into disrepair.
Across the boy’s lips, the mother’s red lipstick.
The unsheathing of the night.
The specked silver of the wig in his psalm.
In his palm, there was the end of his suffering.
As he trod, barefooted on the concrete.
And the retreating lights of cars passed back into other worlds.
And though the boy’s body felt he could not do it.
He did remove his dress.
And in front of him, I placed the box into the poem.
And he bent himself again into the small child.
And his limbs did crack like the twigs of a trail.
And he did fit inside this box.
Inside this psalm.
And I did close it, again and again.