My boy told me the other day
That he didn’t have a mother
He only had a babysitter

I say my boy--
The boy at my daycare
The boy with seven siblings
Ripped from five of them
Gained another in the process
Losing mothers like pencils

The mother he has now is a teacher,
No summer job,
But four foster kids to her name
Her summers are free
Her pockets are full
But my boys

They’re still in daycare
Six to six
Or longer
They come with bagged eyes
one in pull ups at the age of five
My boys

Their sister's in the other room
Their mother sits at home
Alone
Doing nothing
Probably drinking
Or anything but mothering

Right now
She’s out of town
There’s a babysitter at home
She picks them up late and drops them off early
They're cranky
And tired
They're getting six hours of sleep
Plus one at naptime

My boys never sleep at nap time
None of them but Isaiah
Isaiah
He loves to talk about his home
Not where they sleep at night
But at home
In Africa
He’ll tell you if you ask
It’s beautiful to hear
The joy filling his face is fixating

But then you see his legs
How they wobble in at the knees
When you see how he sleeps
He rocks himself the whole time
Rocking even through his dreams
It’s all from the orphanage.
The workers couldn’t help him to sleep.
He just turned five.
He starts kindergarten soon,
And he just learned how to spell his name
Everyone else here can read all the names
His and theirs
My boys

I love them with everything I have
And they know that,
But I leave soon.
In a few weeks we all go to school
I’ve been doing this for years, but them,
They haven’t
It’s their first
And I’ll pray
But I hate that all I can do is pray
They deserve more than that.
They deserve attention and love
They deserve hope and security
I can only hope that the next teacher will give that to them
To my boys
To my wonderful boys...