An Open Letter To Your Newborn Twins

Boys,

You couldn’t understand how carefully these hands

thumbed those blue eyes into you.

How I pulled your mother, by one finger

onto the island of your father’s birth.

I beat her towards him

with the two legs of the woman I left her for.

If I were honest,

Id say the first trimester of your lives

weren’t devoid of nightmares,

set to the tune of thumping stairwells.

A rush of black blood down the shower drain

in a bathroom I’d never seen.

The one where your father hangs his towels.

Your arrival was a haunting.

At night I heard one of you crawl out from under

the half-empty bed.

I heard the other rustling in the gutted drawers.

You were a fourteen pound bag of nails.

A great black bird nesting in my hair.

You may never again hear our story,

your mother’s and i.

So listen:

The first night we met, in college,

she moved into my room.

That is no lyric.

No metaphor for a courtship.

We were inseparable as two identical shades of blue.

For the next five years

we never slept apart.

Most nights our noses touched until morning.

That is not poetry.

We were a single house.

A monocellular organism.

 This, however, is not about she and I.

I will not belabor you the tale

of the last time your blessed mother will have her heart broken

This is about you

And how I pray that you take the gift

of not being my sons,

and never allow yourself to do

The things I have done.

Learn how to make a graceful exit.

How to fail,

to be spilled milk,

Not the boots of a butcher,

stamping across an opened calf,

smeared over a parquet floor.

Be thankful for your mother.

She is an unknown quality

A version of light beyond science

Her generosity will make men of you.

I do not use your names here,

not because I would’ve chosen them differently,

but for I would be too ashamed to have this rabble

sully the guts of that angel again.

Be grateful -

Everyday - for her.

For a long time,

I was too.

- Brian Omni Dillon

NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY