Home is like a monarch

That thinks it’s a viceroy

Hiding memories like a writers drawers,

Filled with worn cushions of imagination

The toys inside the child’s room cry

In unending dog whistles and choked exhalations

While the child plays general, strips them bare,

And beats them forcing others to watch

Maternal footsteps pass by, unheard

Because the TV’s blaring on a dresser plastered with butterfly stickers, a looming parent

Emitting cartoon figures that scream of magical friendships.

The child’s hand stretched for that animated world

In an attempt to hug, to belong.

Mother comes home late with the moon

Passes by her little soldiers room

Passes by her sleeping bear-man

Passes them by as if she were a stranger

Handing over a fare. In the kitchen,

Nothing awaits, not even metallic leftovers

In cardboard boxes;

She cries “no fair!”

Like a drunk parent at a little league game in a cold afternoon.

Mother cooks like a running turtle

Sets food on TV trays and paper plates

Because dishes are piled high

As if Sarah Cynthia Stout had sprung from her poem to be my sister.

McDonalds quality dinner, radiation

Frozen processing invading each inch of air

But it opens two doors down the hall

In comes the bear, out of hibernation

Dark circles clinging to his eyelids

Mother gives a kiss

Her chin scratched by scraggly beard hairs

He smiles at her, eyes avoiding

Damages large and small

Then the child flies in--

Multi-colored cloths cover flapping wings

Thanks and hugs passed around like a sunday service

A reward for Mothers toil and faith

A bandage for invisible wounds, stigmata unseen

She barely took food on her TV tray while the bear, had a mountain that obscured the day

Husbands smile is a midnight bonfire,

Child's voice is a sweet nectar

It doesn’t matter that they’re their own planets

Meant for alien butterflies

That flew from a different galaxies, a different universes,

They still orbit each other.