Mustard Seed (Part 1)
A boy in a
blue shirt
tucked in partly, partly out of
his Chicago Bulls
basketball shorts,
eyes half open,
snot seeping down to his
agape mouth
wet with drool
slowly flowing
to his chin
drifts over to greet our group.
He one by one
first hugs everyone then
grasps hands of one then
grasps another’s then
begins dazedly
walking trying
pulling them away
to somewhere
unknown and Men and women working
they smile
either blithely or in
embarrassed
discomfort here pass through
unsure
and bemused;
the workers
here must with rags and buckets
guide him with crutches
like this and so is
he parroting
mechanically this routine?
– no.
I do not want this to be true.
–
He is aware
of himself, there is
something there
in his faces wet with sweat
foggy
glass expression
between clumsy affection
a desire to
love us to
pull us along
with him,
and the inability to express it,
to understand it. faces tired
(Who am I to claim that I do?)
I want
to believe
in this,
in his
consciousness,
that
his face
is stuck,
is paralyzed
like one under lethal injection
like one
experiencing pain but
unable to
show it,
I want this to be true,
not for this to
be a routine
patterned task
simply occurring
because
it’s occurred
before.
Copyright © Zach Kaplan | Year Posted 2008
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