Boy

I crept down stealth

Pathways jagged he left open into secret places

boy hiding

When I touched him

Ready to run

When I woke him

Ready to be in my arms

When the dark and quiet hid him in love’s openness

I pretended not to know his name

Pretended not to know

Four score years and more is a long time to be alone

ungrown

Pathways jagged we have traveled

Entered whole and left fragmented

My empty spaces

Voluminous

Fill him

Fissures filled with hurt like putty gushing

He blocks entry with my bareness

Takes my nothing and turns it into mortar and brick

Yet something seeps

And now he’s left the scent of his long sleep on me

And what am I to do with that?