Family Anecdotes

Once, one of the several

Brothers in that family,

An older, adopted boy

With vision and cognition

Challenges but otherwise

Robustly able-bodied,

Crawled out into the hallway

In the middle of the night,

Wholly parasomniac,

Feeling around the bare floor,

Calling out from a nightmare

He couldn’t shake, Where’s the rug?

Where’s the floor? That’s how it is

Decades later, with the news,

A surviving brother thinks.

If you could just find the floor,

The baseboards of behavior,

Some baseline expectations,

You could cope with this darkness,

But you’re already down there

Groping, scared, not half aware.