Poem on My Son's 23rd Birthday
How far away it seems I told him last night, over rainbow rolls and Agedashi.
How I went into labor on a Wednesday. Three days of people saying
I wasn’t, that it was weeks away. On Saturday, I called the doula.
She suggested we go to the zoo. Three hours later he was slipping out of me
like a five-pound bass. Wide-eyed and curious,
he took a good look at us. Then he cried,
went for my breast. I didn’t know how tired and anxious I’d get, how sure
someone would call CPS, how I’d panic when I couldn’t stop his crying
even while belting out Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.
The night I ended up at Behavioral Health, my son in a squad car
because I said I wasn’t sure, when they asked,
if I’d hurt him.
It was October. We’d pasted black bats on our front door,
strung candy corn lights. I began hearing crows
that weren’t there. Little boy in his blue fleecy.
Your dad brought you each afternoon during visiting hour,
where I held you, not sure I’d ever get out. My now
was committed. My mind, though doing better,
had spent a week hearing my father in the hallway, believing God,
the Unabomber, and I were in cahoots. But it turned out
to be hormonal. Soon I was taking him to mom
and baby yoga. We had a little routine, me-n-you: mornings on the go,
then home for your nap, then playing in the backyard, which morphed
to museums and zoos, which preschool
and school, two graduations, to this day I’m not telling you,
as I’m placing 23 candles on your cake, I spent four weeks
away from you because they thought I’d kill you.
Because I thought I was smoldering in a can like the ones they filled with wood,
set on fire beside a frozen Tommy’s Pond.
What did that month end up mattering?
Less than this sip of sake I drink from your cup, less than this dab of wasabi
on my Hamachi, less than this moment,
which leads to the next.
How I went into labor on a Wednesday. Three days of people saying
I wasn’t, that it was weeks away. On Saturday, I called the doula.
She suggested we go to the zoo. Three hours later he was slipping out of me
like a five-pound bass. Wide-eyed and curious,
he took a good look at us. Then he cried,
went for my breast. I didn’t know how tired and anxious I’d get, how sure
someone would call CPS, how I’d panic when I couldn’t stop his crying
even while belting out Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.
The night I ended up at Behavioral Health, my son in a squad car
because I said I wasn’t sure, when they asked,
if I’d hurt him.
It was October. We’d pasted black bats on our front door,
strung candy corn lights. I began hearing crows
that weren’t there. Little boy in his blue fleecy.
Your dad brought you each afternoon during visiting hour,
where I held you, not sure I’d ever get out. My now
was committed. My mind, though doing better,
had spent a week hearing my father in the hallway, believing God,
the Unabomber, and I were in cahoots. But it turned out
to be hormonal. Soon I was taking him to mom
and baby yoga. We had a little routine, me-n-you: mornings on the go,
then home for your nap, then playing in the backyard, which morphed
to museums and zoos, which preschool
and school, two graduations, to this day I’m not telling you,
as I’m placing 23 candles on your cake, I spent four weeks
away from you because they thought I’d kill you.
Because I thought I was smoldering in a can like the ones they filled with wood,
set on fire beside a frozen Tommy’s Pond.
What did that month end up mattering?
Less than this sip of sake I drink from your cup, less than this dab of wasabi
on my Hamachi, less than this moment,
which leads to the next.
September 2024
Martha Silano is the author of six books of poetry, most recently This One We Call Ours (Lynx House Press, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere.
Art: Kelly Cressio-Moeller, Childhood Faultlines. Mixed media: acrylic, ink, paper, mica flakes on basswood panel, 2023.