He only thinks about the holes in his brain when it’s quiet enough to hear the

streetlight flickering up and coming through the shades

and as he does, he thinks of the stones out back his father said were

too big for the sledge and would then fill with dynamite, light, cover, and hide

so that the bursting of pieces wouldn’t reach their eyes.

He thinks of those holes as breaks in the granite where his

father’s fingers could slip in and sink the sticks, the twigs,

the murmured holiday rumors, the kindling

of broken parts of their family’s tree, the uncle they’ve

left for the woods, where stoplights don’t reach and where night

might stay for weeks and where he fears,

where he fears he belongs.

He thinks of those holes as home,

he sees the four knuckles of his fingers at their rubbery edges

clawing to climb but finding that slipping

seems more natural, more inherited under the weight of it all,

with the sun quickly sinking and somehow suggesting a cabin in the woods,

maybe a row of streetside evergreens implanted like a stone wall—

He knows they burn quick when they’re lit and

where his father has hidden the family book of matches.