asleep, he was loved.  loved, also, in the margins of waking.  a hand on the head, or breakfast after payday.  he would try to keep quiet the unclosed wound of his voice; a darkened bandage, like bacon, held to his mouth.  but the morning, each morning, would leave, more so clothed than it had come.  if ever you’ve looked, at noon, for your mother, she would’ve been with his.  two sets of thumbprints, two glasses.  he would put his thumb to one, then the other.  days your mother stayed with you, his own would give him crayons.  once, that he can remember, he put the white in her cigarette box and heard about it.  it’s the kind of kid he was fully awake: bad.  his cheeks often burned.  their redness would unhinge his mother so that she would slap at the pale inquiry of his neck.  seven years old, and still drawing stick figures.  he could not keep himself from it.  three legged figures, one armed.  torsos were a problem for him, and crotches.  but there they would be, middle on middle, three lines to indicate ******, or wind.  his mother wouldn’t get sick but would say that she was.  before dinner, she would give him ice cream.  he would fall asleep without dinner and his father would come home, shower, and leave.  it made him stronger, not seeing his father eat.

     the stick figures, when he met them, were not like his drawings, but they wanted to be.  they would contort  and untangle from each other and giggle.  his mother once came upon them and they broke into many sticks at his feet.  she did not know what he was laughing at and tried to lift him but he was fat for his age and she pulled a muscle in her stomach.  he put her on his back.  she would not unstiffen.  at home, in front of the fire, she was angry.  her arm was crooked, aimed at him, and one of her eyes was trying to watch him.  he shut the door to his room and practiced becoming many.  his parts would not let.  he gave up; the fire lowered.  the noise his mother made sounded set aside; some special box opened in the house of a demon.  he had to cut her clothes from her so she could breathe.  she rose, simply; not like the dead.  something, in the second box, skittered from it.  the boy crumpled.  his head did not roll like he thought it would, but he smiled anyway.  if his mother was screaming, only his ears could hear it.