Laslo Dazzles His Mother

Laslo dazzles his mother.
At breakfast with the pall bearers,
she wore a long, black brocade.

Numbly she twines the purse strap
’round knotted fingers, as once she did
the dark, ropy curls
of her boy’s head.

Laslo confounds her:
The home is silent still.
The moldering upholstery and
faded arabesques
in the worn parts of the rug
are enduring.
Only the matted face of a cat’s meow
misses the warm crook of his arm,
the scent under his skin.

For long he padded through doorways,
mumbled over his tea,
and clanged
the spoon inadvertently,
while somewhere a bird chirruped
to the insipid sounding
of his heart.

Laslo dazzled his mother
with the indolent rasp
of his every breath.
It never ceased to alarm her
that he could,
or even should,
have been at all.

Chance made a man.

But Laslo grew tiresome, and grave.

The sight of his
deep shadow along the wall
with hunched shoulders —
seeming of itself to wear
a small, ironical grin —
that does not easily leave
his mother.

With the resolve of the afflicted,
she lifts her gaze
and knows this:
Laslo can never be dislodged —
like something caught
in the maw
and curdled there.

 

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