Credit card shards

scraping in a kitchen drawer

make tiny music

 

as my father palms a car key

like an amulet.

He’d knife the ignition and escape

 

if my mother didn’t lie

beneath a station wagon,

ESL worksheets skittering to the curb

 

with the skeletons of maple leaves

while her amniotic fluid

turns to wine.

 

The settlement will finance

PT for my brother, a living room set,

and the reconstruction of her cloven mouth

 

brimming with superlatives

for the son who should have died

and the son who scaffolds him,

 

braided tapers softening

in grownup breath.

Unlike wax, skin

 

doesn’t forget its shape—

it turns shiny

to admit more light.