How We Talk

we named you Leo
but you have cerebral palsy

so even though you’re five
your mouth says Ee-haw

you call our car Keye
a passing plane, Arr

your grandmother, only Guh
though she holds out her soft arms

to you every Tuesday morning
her blue eyes wet, waiting for a word

ball, box, bunny, bat.
nobody understands you –

nor me, at my wit’s end
for ways to connect

your tongue to my heart
my heart to your future

they say I’m an angel
they say you’re lucky to have me

well I’ve learned your lexicon
but I don’t like it

it never settles – a frantic fledgling –
it pierces and rips me inside

until bullshit, I spit
despair at you when no one’s there

why can’t you talk I cry
and I make you cry.

Jess Pulver is a therapist and mother living in Maine. She has recently returned to the writing life after majoring in creative writing over twenty years ago at Swarthmore College. Her non-fiction essays and poems have appeared in The Good Life Review, Waccamaw, Literary Mama, and Kaleidoscope. In her free time, she tends a large garden.