I forgot your name, the Mother says, pushing a stroller across the floor.
Her kid twists his neck like a bird too delicate
strained towards the source of the world
How did you forget? How? Plaintive and unthinking
She says: I’ve only known you for five years.
Five years is:
Fresh steps and green-eyed girls and
green-skinned apples & black-eyed peas
And eating well too well and never never crying
Cotton shirts in red and blue
Her words: I’ve only known you for five years.
Land on the edge of my too-dull knife and glance off the steel,
where I’m standing at the counter, listening, not listening
& they fall down far to rest on the toe of my boot
Five years of hard mud on the bottom of this pair
Dust and time and sick
and glass and salt
And never never crying
I’ve learned a lot of names and faces and
boots of other boys and girls names & shoes & mothers
She’s smiling when she gives her answer: I’ve only known you for five years.
Of never never crying, and
pushing that stroller around and maybe,
five years really isn’t a long time
To learn a name takes miles maybe miles more
Maybe she’s right and I don’t really know the names of boys and girls & shoes & mothers
Or the name of anything: any green-eyed girls or green-skinned apples
And the stroller leaves tracks on the hardwood floor,
from the front door to the back, like bends in a river
Bringing the outside to the inside
And I will mop them up tonight,
so they won’t be there tomorrow