The First of Summer
by Timothy Reed
The sound of fireworks
signaled the southern new-year
as we embraced on the porch,
awaiting our son’s entrance and
pondering all that passed.
We caught sleep to the sounds
of celebration
but woke to a hard rain
of sporadic kicks
coming fainter, weaker now.
I tripped through
a conversation
with two months’ worth
of broken Portuguese;
worry is the universal tongue,
need the timeless motivator.
4 wheels sped and sprayed
those weary miles between
us and that ultrasound
the wind and rain beating
hell against our car -
our silence, tempestuous.
Grainy grey blobs
danced on the screen —
sandpaper in our eyes,
in our souls, as we learned
you were to come today
(there could be no delay).
Red-hot tears flowing,
windshield wipers clapping
back and forth, back and forth -
I tried not to collide
with the outside world
as we pondered the knife
now dangling over us.
The sting and the stench
of alcohol, the rubber-duck-yellow
scrubs, the curtain hung tentatively
clinging to decency and protecting
us
from knowing with what slices
and pushes and needles and tubes
it would take to free him.
Suddenly, a scream
the newest, most fragile cry
and the face of Benjamin -
he had come home.
In the sleepy aftermath
of New Year in Goiânia
he slept, swimming in his first clothes
we wept, cried, prayed, and coughed
but did not sleep.
