Despite the brief streaks of self-
belief, a stubborn defeat pervades.
Absent a job, absent a title.
I want to declare: a great undoing has taken place.
And I don’t know where to search for the bricks
that once made up the house of who I used to be.
My children sense what I have not told them.
They do their best to soothe me.
Before the morning coffee brewed, two little
birds circle laughter from the kitchen to the living room.
The older one observes from the couch, then approaches
to grant me a silent hug.
How do I teach them about the ways
I started out to avoid? Which of my myths
can I plant along their growing paths?
Using a pencil, I draw
a faint line between accountability and control.
On one side and the other
I catalog everything I can
remember to include.
The lists are important things. Completed,
they are longer than I expected.
My birds play joyfully in the next room
while I press on despite the distraction.
Where was I while my undoing was happening?
And who can help me understand
what it is that I cause and what it is that I suffer?
Hugo Dos Santos is the author of Reduction in Force, winner of the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize, and Then, there, a collection of stories. He is the translator of Homecoming and A Child in Ruins.
