Toy Room

One son plays monster rage. His brother plays ship crashed in a maze. We are reading Hulk. We are reading Theseus. White sails, green men, bright women who give everything and get nothing. The monster son would never sail a ship into a maze, but brothers are not the same. They hear the same stories and make different toys of them, muscled figures in their fists, walls of wood and magnets. Who knows why a part of me always departs this place, glides out the window to rain and falling leaves, dresses of wetness and gold. She floats there, blessed by air, but when she tries to slip back in, she can’t; she hangs beyond the glass, panicked, then bulging with fury. Days later another part of me flies, into a maple the color of platelets, and another into bareness and sky. I’ve lost count of how many fists are now pounding my house, how many mouths are braying how many cries, but here inside, for now, my dear sons call to me for their fallen castles, built again, to find all the missing arrows.