Jan 2011
Love On Walls
My son has been learning how to breathe for six years now and
Last night I caught him drawing on our living room walls
With his blue and red Crayola markers
Initially,
My first intention was to yell
Let him know he did something wrong
Then on the wall I saw a blue stick woman wearing a red dress
I said “Son, what are you doing?” he said,
“drawing.”
I said, “Who are you drawing?” he said,
“Mommy”
I said, “Why are you drawing mommy?” he said,
“Because she’s never around and I can’t find pictures.”
The room got so quiet, I almost whispered to the drawing
I miss you
Then he asked, “will mommy come back?”
And by now this conversation had become so human
I told him, “No, she wanted to leave.”
Then he said, “Will you leave me too?”
That was a stamp
Dipped in the ink of wasps
Stamping and puncturing my heart
I sat next to him by the wall and told him how much I loved him
My feet are within the concrete of his heart and I’ll never leave
I look at him with love
My eyelashes go up and down
Pouring out stars
Forming constellations to tell him bed-time stories
I’ll always be here
We can go to your favorite fast food restaurant and I’ll let you have my fries
We can go outside and play catch with your new baseball glove
And if you don’t like baseball that’s okay
Instead of learning how to throw a change up, I’ll teach you how to live
You can ask me all the question you have in your tiny beautiful head
And I’ll answer them with all the leftover imagination I have stored up in mine
He said we could make silly stories and he loves me
I picked him up in my arms and asked him what he knew about love
He said, “you shouldn’t say I love you unless you mean it. But if you do mean it, you should say it a lot. Because people forget. And I think you forgot dad.”
I told him I did.
And now the only reason I pulse is to make him remember every day
The rest of the night we drew on the walls
We made cars, boats, helicopters and airplanes
Beautiful clouds, long squiggly lines that would go down the stair case and doodles
Around two o’ clock in the morning
We finally grew tired of illuminated art from our fingertips
But he didn’t want to sleep until we played with his action figures
I was batman
From my bat-belt I removed sand man’s sweat grain
and sprinkled dreams upon my boys forehead like
Fertilizing his mind with Polaroid’s of family vacations
And that one time for his piano recital
He was too scared to play until I stood up in the crowd, smiled and waved
I’ll always be there
My son has been learning how to breathe for six years now and
Last night I caught him drawing on our living room walls
With his blue and red Crayola markers
Initially,
My first intention was to yell
Let him know he did something wrong
Then on the wall I saw a blue stick woman wearing a red dress
I said “Son, what are you doing?” he said,
“drawing.”
I said, “Who are you drawing?” he said,
“Mommy”
I said, “Why are you drawing mommy?” he said,
“Because she’s never around and I can’t find pictures.”
The room got so quiet, I almost whispered to the drawing
I miss you
Then he asked, “will mommy come back?”
And by now this conversation had become so human
I told him, “No, she wanted to leave.”
Then he said, “Will you leave me too?”
That was a stamp
Dipped in the ink of wasps
Stamping and puncturing my heart
I sat next to him by the wall and told him how much I loved him
My feet are within the concrete of his heart and I’ll never leave
I look at him with love
My eyelashes go up and down
Pouring out stars
Forming constellations to tell him bed-time stories
I’ll always be here
We can go to your favorite fast food restaurant and I’ll let you have my fries
We can go outside and play catch with your new baseball glove
And if you don’t like baseball that’s okay
Instead of learning how to throw a change up, I’ll teach you how to live
You can ask me all the question you have in your tiny beautiful head
And I’ll answer them with all the leftover imagination I have stored up in mine
He said we could make silly stories and he loves me
I picked him up in my arms and asked him what he knew about love
He said, “you shouldn’t say I love you unless you mean it. But if you do mean it, you should say it a lot. Because people forget. And I think you forgot dad.”
I told him I did.
And now the only reason I pulse is to make him remember every day
The rest of the night we drew on the walls
We made cars, boats, helicopters and airplanes
Beautiful clouds, long squiggly lines that would go down the stair case and doodles
Around two o’ clock in the morning
We finally grew tired of illuminated art from our fingertips
But he didn’t want to sleep until we played with his action figures
I was batman
From my bat-belt I removed sand man’s sweat grain
and sprinkled dreams upon my boys forehead like
Fertilizing his mind with Polaroid’s of family vacations
And that one time for his piano recital
He was too scared to play until I stood up in the crowd, smiled and waved
I’ll always be there
