At Christmas, we flew home to avoid the floods,
or my imagination, I wasn’t sure. America waited.
In our border town of Neponset, the chocolate
factories were still on fire, the priest’s slave girl
crying into the bulrushes, the joy out of Mattapan
nearly too much to bear. I walked the river trail
making a bouquet of poinsettias from the graves
of each disappeared. My mother arranged for me
to see someone at Carney. Adam said I could stay
in country with him as long as I needed. I made
you so sad. We lingered in galleries of the gas tank
museum discussing the absences left on the walls,
where the thieves, before they passed, might have
hidden the thirteen people I’d once wanted to be.
I bought acoustic holiday CDs at Osco & made
myself ugly before Julia at her parents’ party.
In my childhood backyard, weeping skeleton
of mulberry, birdhouse rotting under strung lights,
I almost saw myself as a boy lowered into the bright
light of myself once. I built a spaceship of radon
& birchwood skulls of raccoons & wrestling mat
I made believe a forsythia bower to keep that world
from this. I heard voices past where asylum touches
flower, the question
        beautiful, what will make you feel real
for the horror vacui
        singing, with your hands voices trying
to reach me: Recognize the man you’ve become.
Crawl out of the picture book—be a husband,
be a father. Be here with me in your parents’
broken greenhouse as the snow falls. I’ll hold you
in my mind until you can get your shit together.