WEIGHTS AND MEASURES (continued)
By Harrison Solow

He likes stories two minutes long. Told through the thick glass, into the kiosk,
Across the wide counter by people he already knows. 
News of the village in edible proportions. 
Decorous, re-current events.
 
His tie is carefully knotted. His hair, brushed the way it was for his first day at school. 
Everyone approves of him. His dimples deepen at this thought,
In the soft pink flesh of his cheeks, 
The only visible sign of his jaw, clenched, beneath.

Every Monday, he searches my face with a lust he does not feel.
His throat contracts. And so he sings.

“Let me out” he moans at me silently.
“Let me out” he pleads with his afternoon eyes, 
When the day has not been made for children. 
“Let me out” he explodes like Pubescence, ashamed of its voice.                                      

And how the world wants him in his song, his golden secret, his honeyed throat,
His vast internal choir. Desire, everywhere, abounds. He does not see it. 
He needs a map to manhood. 
He needs the open road.
 
But he has built his own enclosures carefully over the years, with the toys he was given, 
Each birthday of his perpetual boyhood. Little prisons made of weight and repetition,
Kiosks and countertops, roles and titles, bright eyes and trusting smiles.
“Sweet little Postmaster.”  “Little-Pavarotti.” they say (to his face).
 
I would free him in a second from those cages - take his lifeless hand and run with him 
Over the dark and emerald hills of Wales - far from his imaginary captors and out into Beyond 
Where he could sing alone, as Bards and Brave Men do.
And I would, I will, I vow to, let him go. 

But. He will not give me the key he holds so tightly beneath his clothes. Atop his clean white skin. 
Above the impenetrable nippled breast shielding his still undamaged heart against the future. 
Once he almost whispered “Come and get it.” 
But stopped just after “Come...”
 
These children are strong.
In the daylight, a boy can strangle a man in mid-song, with his bare and virgin hands.


Copyright © 2006 by Harrison Solow