Echo
1988

I search the photo
For a voice I can't
Remember, a faint laugh
In an echo of clocks.
His eyes speak the tongue
Of shadows, my eyes talk
A world he cannot see.

I catch myself whispering,
In frame-silence, as if
Whispers could be heard
Six years ago. A flicker of light
Doesn't return, though his hands
Still hold the yad
Of a Bar Mitzvah boy.

Imagine his hands
Wrapped around my back,
His fingers clutching
Mine in a faint grasp. Each
July, I see his small hands
Flung against glass, his face
Bruised like a rotten peach.

The decibel of pain is fainter,
Ebbing like blackened water
In the river of my gut. The ache
Is a whisper you hear
At night, in the loneliness of bed:
Munch's Scream of Silence.
He will not grow up.