Ultrasound

Abstract

Ultrasound George David Clark (bio) Henry Thomas Clark, 10/7/14 I. Your Picture We've framed an ultrasound of you and Peter holding hands (or almost) in the womb, your moon-bright arms crossed in a black balloon with week, and weights, and heights in millimeters penciled on the side. We say it's good that he, at least, was with you when you died, that unlike us you'll never know the why of being lonely or what naked falsehood feels like in one's mind. You see, it's false [End Page 350] to say your death was somehow grace. It's grace that spared Cain's life and later gave Eve other sons, despite creation's wastes and faults. I wish you could have known love's aftertastes. I wish you'd had a chance to hate your brother. II. Your Mirror I wish you'd had a chance to hate your brother's charming smile, how it would softly chafe your teeth; his eyes, the way they'd misbehave above your cheeks; his tongue might bait your stutter. Nights, in the mirror you'd have seen your lovers kiss his lips, and mornings as you'd shave you'd nick yourself and wonder who forgave you when the face you shared caused him to suffer. [End Page 351] No. No childhood scars will make it clearer which you are. We'll have a future tense for Peter, while you're left at one night less than one night old, my son without a likeness, whom I can't hold or half-behold, condensed to shadows in the nursery's lightless mirror. III. Your Shadows The shadows in the nursery's lifeless mirror owe their nights to no one; you were gone before the lights could pin those umbras on. If now they gather here in tangles sheerer than a nest of nylon hose, yet nearer flesh than atmosphere, they must be drawn as I am by the dimmed lamp's denouement— [End Page 352] this stupid wish your guise might still cohere or that some phantom wisp could throw its shade and let the smallest sliver of you loom against the wall. Instead, daybreak exhumes this catch of shadows till they've all been weighed and matched to furniture. My shape has stayed to cast your name into the empty room. IV: Your Room I cast your name into the empty room and make the place more empty still: the chair's clean seat adopts a misanthropic air that mocks the bureau's sympathetic bloom. I watch the wooden crib as it's consumed by morning, bar by bar, till crying downstairs [End Page 353] lets me know how far this solitary staring has erased me in the gloom. Your healthy twin is hungry, tired, parched, and wet, or simply needing to be held, and yet I still don't move. I feel compelled to tell the room it's missing you, to mark the vacuum with a few more decibels of Henry, Henry, Henry Thomas Clark. V: Your Names My Henry, Henry, Henry Thomas Clark: your name's an ingot— if I even think it after midnight in the bedroom's dark the kiln my mind is fires to sing it out of shape, to turn its sounds to trinkets [End Page 354] or just melt it down to question marks so I can ladle up that pink and drink it till my ears drown and the dreaming starts. Your sister's "Gemma- Lemon" in her fruit pajamas, Georgie-Boy's my little buddy, and Pete these days is simply "the recruit." Beneath my desk you'd be "my understudy," "Huffy Hank" in tears, or "Huckleputty" sweetly teething on your mom's Bluetooth. VI: Your Urn Tonight Pete's teething on your mom's Bluetooth. He found the scissors to derange his hair. We've left the gate down and he's on the stairs, or else he's scrambled up the dollhouse roof. [End Page 355] The crumpled books and cracker crumbs are proof he's loose … disordered blocks, a toppled chair. … Some days he's absolutely everywhere until I wish him gone...