"Three"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have posted work by myself each Friday. This is a new piece about my family when I was young.

Three

“Three is a magic number,” they sang on Saturday morning TV,
Multiplication Rock crooned “A man and a woman had a little baby,
They had three in the family…that’s a magic number.”
The past and the present and the future.
Faith and hope and charity.
The Heart and the Brain and the Body
give you three, but it was only ever us,
just the three of us, moving
town to city, house to house,
only ever us. Saturday night, hamburgers and
strawberry shortcake, my mom and dad and me
in the living room watching Carol Burnett,
sharing laughter just among ourselves,
isolated. Never guests, no visitors, only my
mom and dad and me at my birthday party,
the outside world remained that way.
Just us three, it’s a magic number.

I am an adult now, lying in darkness, listing and
arranging tomorrow’s tasks as I fall asleep.
I will shave in the morning for my meeting
I think, and for no reason recall my first time shaving,
in our two-bedroom apartment in Miami,
number 313 on the top floor of a three-story building,
fuzz had eventually turned to whiskers and
my dad agreed to let me use his electric shaver.
My mom wanted to take a picture with our Kodak Instamatic but
I was embarrassed and ran, slamming the bathroom door,
shutting her out when she only wanted to mark a moment
her boy took another step to being a man.
Why didn’t I let her take the picture? She wanted it,
just let her have it, I say to me at thirteen
going on fourteen. My family wants things,
that is, if only we’d survived.
My mother is electric, my father is a ghost.
Their blood lives in my chest, the three of us, still alone.
I am my mother now, I am my father, I say it out loud,

we are a magic number.

©JEF 2024