When he fled home at fourteen, I think
he traded socialization for survival.
My mother can’t remember much
about him leaving, just what he was like
when they found him years later, whittled
away by stories he still has yet to share.
Now, my uncle can’t make eye contact.
He also can’t love, or breathe air not filtered
through cigarettes. He can’t make small talk
without it feeling like punishment: he projects
his mundane thoughts at the wall and forgets
names of people he’s met a hundred times.
He’s odd, I guess, some would say.
But sometimes I imagine if his emaciated
body was instead fattened up by oily, home
cooked meals. I wonder if then, his hollow eye sockets
would turn plump, finally releasing his wandering
pupils from the stem of his brain.
Growing up I heard stories of him in his twenties,
kicking out the windshield of my mother’s run-down
Camry on the way to the hospital, the car a moving
prison rolling away from his true self.
She’d watch his stomach pumped by paramedics
he was certain were out to kill him, the hospital
bed cradling his detoxing body the same way
he would one day cradle his two daughters,
who would grow up learning how to talk to the whites
of his eyes, searching for the meaning behind
them, praying it could be love.
Shayana Foroutan is an emerging poet studying creative writing at New York University.