THE WORLD WON’T WAIT

On Tuesday, I watched as a 27-year-old man

held an electric toothbrush in his hand.

His fingers fumbled a bit at the switch,

but he flipped it, then sat astounded

as the dry brush shimmied and jumped in his palm.

This run on batteries?, he asked,

turning it upside down,

his eyes lit with a toddler’s wonder.

Perhaps you see nothing amazing in this.

But let me paint a picture of this man.

His chest is impossibly plumped, thick and rigid,

his skin mapped with stretch marks

where the muscle has exploded beneath.

His shaved head, a field of grizzle and sweet spray,

is peppered with gouges where the blade sensed

his blood and slipped. He is a child of single syllables,

grunts just under the radar:

I need to eat.

I’m real tired.

Think it’s gon’ rain.

I like that shirt.

He is my

son, crafted of fevers unleashed and jailhouse iron.

And now, with the clear beyond cry, I see

that his punishment was never there,

among the scabbed tattoos, sluggish clocks, open toilets.

His sentence began in the free, in that moment

when he turned a cheap chugging red toothbrush

over and over in his huge hands and said,

Look at this, Ma. Wow, look at this.