That I wait for his call every Sunday night,
though I pretend to myself that I don’t care.
I have lost the easy way I once had with him,
the nights I sat at the edge of his bed
and we’d talk in the soft dark of his bedroom
until he fell asleep, that time when I felt so close to him
we could have been in one skin.
But now his own children grown, it’s as though
a stranger has come to inhabit his body.
I struggle to find a story that will make him laugh
or some anecdote that will interest him.
I can’t tell my son that I cry often after these calls,
can’t tell him how much I need to hear his voice,
can’t tell him I can still feel his high cheekbones
under my hand, still remember his heavy head leaning
against me as I read to him when he was a child.
I wonder what words he holds back.
Is he sad, too, when he hangs up the phone?
Yet, even these 10-minute phone calls,
these painful, awkward attempts at touch,
even these I do not want to give up,
so that if he were five minutes late with his call, I’d worry
and when the call is over, such loss I feel, such loss,
this son I will never stop loving,
though I am afraid sometimes
that if he were to walk into a room
I would no longer recognize him,
and I do not have the courage to ask him
if these calls are as painful and necessary for him
as they are for me.
What I Can’t Tell My Son by Maria Mazziotti Gillan from What Blooms in Winter. NYQ Books, 2015.