Sounds at Seventeen

There’s someone screaming in your house.

It’s the stomach cancer, you say.

Your Aunt Sophie has come to live with you.

Or die with you as the case may be.

But there’s laughter too.

Your father has come home on a Friday night

with small gifts for the youngest two.

It may just be candy. A tiny bobble-head doll.

But to reach the hand up and receive

from the tall man in blue overalls

is surely the way prayers to God are answered.

And sometimes there’s crying.

Like when the cops haul your teenage brother home.

They warn what will happen the next time.

Tears dot your mothers cheeks like sequins.

And she can’t speak for sobbing.

I’m not used to people who can’t hide

what they feel that moment.

There’s just my mother and I at home.

What we think is like sex,

never spoken of.

So to sit on the couch with you

is a trembling experiment in honesty, in exposure.

I was brought up in phony calm.

I have no sound to make.

But I hear a scream, then a laugh, then a sob.

I steal a kiss but it’s the noise that steals the silence.

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John Grey is an Australian born poet, playwright, musician. His latest book is “What Else Is There” from Main Street Rag. His work has recently been featured in The English Journal, The Pedestal, Pearl and the Journal Of The American Medical Association.