Liam Strong

a gift from aunt Jan

 
in rumpled newspaper
a small box of Legos
 
you have bought
me for Christmas
 
two years in a
row
 
before dementia clothed
you like a blanket
 
on the hunchback
of a couch
 
you knew i was
old enough to love
 
Depeche Mode   Radiohead
you didn’t tell me
 
what it meant to wake
up from a dream
 
where no one spoke
your language
 
my mother talks
past your wheelchair
 
as if you can still
your quaking teeth
 
those are not your hips
beneath your wooden dinner
 
tray
they were given
 
but not what we call
a gift
 
how to tell another
 
with plastic
smiles that
 
i have remembered
them
 
there are five
dollars in a card
 
evoking a watered down
blessing
 
i can read your hand-
writing best back-
 
wards
those are not your
 
words
& i am not playing
 
with a brick hospital
the architecture
 
a bright patchwork
that with one
 
cudgeled fist
could shatter

--
Liam Strong is a Pushcart Prize nominated queer writer and studies English at University of Wisconsin-Superior. They are the former editor of NMC Magazine. You can find their works in Impossible Archetype, Dunes Review, Clementine Unbound, Monday Night, IDK Magazine, The Maynard, Panoply, Rusty Scythe, and The 3288 Review.