I speak to him in an old
language,
musty and inveterate,
with a faint
whiff of salty cheese
and home-made bread.
Here, dragons
have only four letters,
cars are
complicated machinery
and polenta
is made up of eMs.
Here, to be
is thinner than
a spider’s thread.
I let him have it,
this language
of mine,
one word
at a time:
medicine for an illness
to come.
Curled up in his bed,
sleepy,
he asks for a story.
His fingers
follow obscure trails
along my scalp.
“A story from here”,
he tells me
“in your tongue.”