your thoughtful quiet locked within
                six matryoshka dolls,
your curiosity creeps sweetly out  
                with a speech unable of
your surface like stone blown smooth
                against Siberian shores,
your warm hunger kept by waiting
                for table to be set.

my son drew eyeballs in every corner
                and wall of his bedroom
at the age of three,
                and we laughed asking why?

my beautiful son said he was scared
                at night and they helped him
fall asleep so was it
                all right? sure it was all right.

one august ninth I was asked to leave,
                thinking it would be all right.
all right, and we didn’t hug and kiss
                until next winter, the first shell

had fallen tight, I saw it in his painted eyes—