The Hangman

Reasonable, reasonable, reasonable…we walked through ten different homes, they always call them homes, to find one ward where they like the babies who looks like you. Each time, the eyes that no one owns watched us intently, these visitors from the street that moves outside. They watched, but did not know about time, there in the house where babies never grow. My boy, though innocent and mild your brain is obsolete. Those six times that you almost died the newest medicine and the family fuss pulled you back again. Supplied with air, against my guilty wish, your clogged pipes cried like Lazarus. At first your mother said…why me! why me! But she got over that. Now she enjoys her dull daily care and her hectic bravery. You do not love anyone. She is not growing a boy; she is enlarging a stone to wear around her neck. Some nights in our bed her mouth snores at me coldly or when she turns, her kisses walking out of the sea, I think of the bad stories, the monster and the wreck. I think of that Scandinavian tale that tells of the king who killed nine sons in turn. Slaughtered wholesale, they had one life in common as you have mine, my son.