note: Though I felt compelled to write this, do not feel compelled to read it. Putting the words in place was like building a wall with 100 pound stones, and I was a complete wreck afterward. I read it in public once, and do not expect to do so again.
The reference in the title is to "the disappeared" of Argentina, left-wing "enemies" abducted and murdered and secretly buried by a right-wing dictatorship.
Desaparacidos Nortamericanos
“...one of 150,000 children who are abducted each year. 50,000 are taken by strangers, such as sex offenders or extortionists. Parents in custody disputes abduct 100,000. Ten percent are found alive. Ten percent are found dead. The rest are never seen by their parents again.”
--Associated Press, Nov.21, 1982
“Each year, 2,000 unidentified youngsters beaten beyond recognition are buried,” Brasco said, “leaving behind unknowing parents living in anguish and clinging to the hope that their missing son or daughter is still alive.”
--United Press International, 1983
As the little hands keep pushing you away
but without hitting, and as he keeps explaining
“no,” as if that one word were enough,
we ask you please to listen, not to his pleading,
but only to its echo inside you, to know
it IS there, still there; and as you watch
first the astonishment and then the grief
curdle his face, taste the aftertaste
of the sweetness of triumph, its milklike certainty,
and ask what ceaseless caring would certainly have
been yours, had you been ours, for both of us
have been more than good to the poor, the bereft,
the foreign, antagonized, all, in case it was you
that it might have been. When at last
the heaving gives way to sobbing, the sobbing to sighing
and deep breathing, sleep
beside him--he will expect it--and in the night
will turn to you and call you his mother. By daylight
you’ll know your mistake: he says he’s three
but he knows his name, remembers where he lives,
can dial. You’ll have to go younger
next time.
Those who steal must be forgiven,
we’ve told him, for needing so much. We cannot give someone
away who has always been his own, but we can
give you what the world would not: full
responsibility. You are the only
one who will be there to witness what
he might have been.
But before you begin, will you
ask him to sing? And he loves people to laugh,
then you’d be singing, too. You’d always remember
that happiness, you’d know the world is not
so empty a place, perhaps the Voice would learn
it can learn...
When you’re tying him down, please
don’t double knot it, he’ll want to untie it himself
when it’s over. While you’re beating his buttocks bloody
think of the hundreds of times we’ve had that chance--
holding him holding us, running our hands over
that simple curve simply to move without break
from petting his back to rubbing his feet--that, too,
would have been yours. And when you’re bursting in,
consider how much he hoped his insides would someday
hold something growing. When you have taken the part
that was always meant to give life anyway
and he’s all done making love with even his body
heat, may his untroubled flesh call back
your life as an unborn child, back before
they cut you from your mother, then yourself,
then left, because you cried whenever you wet.
We do not ask you to remember us
until the next day, when you start to miss him
and wonder what to do with him, both
as the same time--now you know what it’s like
to be a parent. Then may you think of our hearts
as he seems to be so much heavier. Think of our arms
as you wonder what place is best for him. Think of our eyes
when you find that hidden depth--we, who will see
everywhere the missing pieces of him.
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