Wonderful!

As if wanting to touch, to be touched

You slip out of your own bones

To lie at her feet

And demand explanations and music.

—What is he doing? He’s going to die! I shout.

What did you say? my mother asks, startling,

To see the mass on the floor, her son's wounded flesh exposed,

Cast out of its fearsome exterior, now so thin and helpless.
I said, he’s going to die!

Oh! She replies, sounding relieved

How splendid. When will he die?
When? When? When?
In a wordless panic, I drop the instrument

And her question bangs in my head like a clock tolling the hour.

His needy reaching innards

Scrape across the violin in the place of its bow.

While he has irrevocably muted his insect throat,

This sounds as human as a scream.

Soon, my father says in response to her query, nodding vigorously.