Sons

 I remember the day I realized my love
no longer comforted you--

inside that day was a hundred yesterdays--

when I held you, both of us crying,

in the hospital as they fit your newborn arm with an IV,

and your tiny face with a cannula--

when I lay beside you in your bed, 

rubbing your eight-year-old feet, fevered and blistered,

so you could sleep through until morning--

when I stood, with electricity in my spine

demanding of bullies in the park what gave them two faces;

one to smile at your baby brother in his stroller

and one to mock you by the ball field,

thinking you alone and unprotected--

I remember those hundred yesterdays and wonder:

did my love ever comfort you?

Or only me?