they’ll arrive at the house
in the poem where the man,
who is the father, who is
the husband, who is the body
in the earth—
but we haven’t
gotten there yet;
we are in the car
with his mother and sister,
who are talking— people-talk,
busy-talk, light nothing-talk
of a weekend afternoon—
on their way to visit
the son, the brother,after
two days, no word and
the fear
that lives like a soreness
in the back of the throat. and now
his mother thinks maybe
of silence, of her son, who
has always been a child of
silence, and now is this all
it will be? but
not yet, there’s just time
now for these still-harmless
thoughts, these nothing-
thoughts nervous nothing-
thoughts of the living.
because when the car pulls up
to the house, it is only a house
and not a foreshadowing or
a place of ends or beginnings.
It is just plaster and bricks
and a door where there is no
answer, which sounds like —
[what they already know].
but they have been wrong
before; they may be wrong
again. please let them not be
prophets; let them not be
the ferrymen to their own grief.
let them be
wrong and human and
unknowing. and if the side door
is open, let them go in
and greet only the living.
and if his sister calls and there is
no answer, perhaps her brother
is simply unhearing, silent.
perhaps her brother is simply sleeping
in silence—but
is there only such a silence
as the grave?
because his mother knows
before she sees it—
the it, not him, of the son—
no longer
her
son, no longer
the breath or voice of her
son. there he is. and she
already knows but still
tests the air with the question,
calls his name once just
to watch it fall.
from ErouFind more by Maya Phillips at the library
Copyright © 2019 Maya Phillips
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.