Speechless

I tried to spell it out in my mind, one letter at a time:
n-o-t-h-i-n-g.

It was nothing, just touching.
This is what brothers do, this is what families do.

I was the moon overheard — wordless and bright.
I was the forest floor — alive and unseen.

Can an eleven-year-old accurately describe an entire planet
splitting apart at the seams?

Earthbound, rooted, I was the maple burning
outside our parents’ bedroom window.

It doesn’t matter if this was the second time or
the eighth.

It doesn’t matter what amount I remember.
I remember enough.

And I knew enough about gravity, even at that age,
not to breathe our reality into being outside that room.

Phil Goldstein's debut poetry collection, How to Bury a Boy at Sea, which reckons with the trauma of child sexual abuse from the male perspective, was published by Stillhouse Press in April 2022. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net award and has appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, The Laurel Review, Rust+Moth, Moist Poetry Journal, Two Peach, The Indianapolis Review, Awakened Voices and elsewhere. He currently lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and animals: a dog named Brenna, and two cats, Grady and Princess.