The son she never had visits her
one night. He’s grown, a man
with stories to tell and scars,
big knuckles. At the table under
yellow light, she asks what it was
like to be a son without a mother.
“Oh, I had a mother,” he says.
The lines on his face are rivers
of her dreams. “She just wasn’t you.”
He takes her hand and leads her
past fact to worn brown carpet
of the “family” room. They dance.
She lays her head on his chest.
Above her is the ceiling where
her husband’s cigar-smoke settled.
Later they sit in the two big chairs.
“Do me a favor,” she asks, “and walk out
the door. I want to know
your manner of leaving.” He
obliges, a good son. Silence rushes back
into the house like winter air.
On the porch she tells herself
he would have had such knuckles
and danced with her that way.
He would have traveled far but come back.
In a factory he would have paused some
days in machinery roar and thought of her.
circa 1989/2021
