Trust

Some twenty years before I was born
my mother was five years old. Her first cousin, then
fifteen years old, in Hungary, was put
on a train with his father, his mother
and his young brother. They went to Poland, but
they did not know then where they were going.
Maybe they knew, once they arrived, that they had gone
to another country. But when they arrived
my mother's cousin saw his own mother
and his baby brother shot dead.
And my mother's aunt, in Hungary, took a train.
When she and her husband got off the train,
her two small children were taken from her
and gassed. Soon her husband died too.
My mother's aunt came to America. She
married her dead sister's husband. She had two more
children, a boy and a girl. I remember once seeing her bare
forearm, a line of blue numbers tattooed on her skin.

One night, when I was a boy, five years old,
I was mad at my parents and I said,
in the way that children do,
I hate you. I wish you weren’t my parents.
So my mother and father took me upstairs,
to my room with the pale blue walls
and blue-and-gold-flecked linoleum floor
and the five-foot-tall styrofoam dinosaur.
I don’t remember who got the suitcase
but my mother began filling it with clothes.
My father brought me my coat,
then led me out to the car. It was a
white Rambler station wagon with wood side panels.
It was cold, late fall or maybe winter.
We drove to Delmont Avenue, along the edge of
those dark woods. “Where would you like me
to drop you off?” he asked. I began to cry
and he drove me back home.

When I wake up in the morning,
and I put my feet on the floor and find
my glasses so that I can see, I check:
how am I? For I can tell in just a few moments
if I am dark or light, high or low;
so my mood speaks to me.
I take four pills. Three of the five-sided ones,
lamotrigine--like the name of an addled
drag queen--and one ranitidine. I feed the
dog and my two cats, and I make coffee.
It is dark outside, for I am an early riser.
I can’t sleep late, no matter how I might wish to.
I look out at the Brooklyn Bridge, and note
the time and temperature sign (courtesy of the
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society). Then,
with my coffee cup, I walk down the two steps
into the dark living room and wait,
sinking down into the worn-out sofa cushions.