My children sit in the window, tiny hot breaths and forty fingers

pressed on the pane glass. I count them all. I leave my boots

on the porch, hollow black holes frozen overnight, preserved

for tomorrow’s shift. The children titter-tatter to the door, feet

slapping hard on the tile. I man handle my keys, fearing

a thump as they race to me, though I am not all there.

My gun stays locked up at the station.

 

I set my patrol bag down. Each child governs a limb.

Rose takes an arm. Oliver takes a leg. Hannah takes an arm.

Henry takes a leg. I carry all of my branches through the terrain

of plastic bodies sprawled on the rug, their disjointed arms and legs,

the flipped over race cars, and the HESS trucks surveilling the scene.

The wail of sirens, the whistle of the bullet, the weight on my chest.

I carry them, my children, over all of it.

 

Dinner is ready. It always is. My wife hands me a distasteful mug

and plate full of love. Meatloaf, asparagus, and potatoes; something balanced.

I have not forgotten her. The complacent plums beneath her stagnant eyes,

and how they raisin when she half smiles. Her pale lips, thin as a thread.

We’re aging hard and fast, consumed by the chaos of my absence, a sometimes empty

mattress, my horror stories to accompany the croaking bed frame.

Tomorrow I’ll be on nights again. With each turn, each shift, we’ll be alone.

 

Tonight I will hold my wife, caress her hair with a clean hand and two dirty fingers,

pointer and middle, the same two that pumped a small ribcage 120 times. She breathes full

and I think about the breath I lost. She does not know a child died today, and I do not tell her.

And so she sleeps and I slip away to watch our children. Barricaded by rainbows and starry

night, I whisper their names and fight the urge to shake them awake

in the pause of their deeper inhales.

 

Come on, stay with me now.