I think of him
every year on my
birthday –
He died of a stomach ache –
I remember how
I wrote poems and
plastered them on
the walls
as though they might
accumulate
into a
thirteen-year-old boy.
I imagine how
his eyes
would be replaced
with small worlds,
his hands holding
desert sand and
sea grass
instead of
the usual
Indiana corn
and coffin nails.