After the nurse has taken all the staples
out of Brad’s new scar, he asks me how many
there were, and I regret not counting.
This is the seventh surgery
since his accident fifteen years ago,
the hardest except for the first
because the doctor had to rebreak
the bone and start over.
We can rebuild him, we have the technology
is something Brad likes to say
because before all this,
he was a boy in the 1970s
who watched The Six Million Dollar Man.
The morning of the accident, our sons
were at swim lessons.
I was watching Matthew’s round head
as he did his bobs, the water slicking
his hair to his face so he looked like
he was being born.
I never saw him like that since I’d had
c-sections and my own staples.
One of my last memories of Brad’s brother
happened at Staples.
They were leaving to drive across the country,
and we were saying goodbye, and it was late
and dark, but they were still going
to try to make it to Montana,
and of course before they left,
they needed to print something at the last minute
because for them time was always something
you could make more of.
We said goodbye under the red sign
that said Staples, and this stapled itself
to the moment so now when I drive by Staples,
I think of Terry bending down to hug me
for one of the last times before he died.
Brad walked into this room
on the same crutches he’s been using
since the original accident.
The handles are wrapped in blue tape,
and parts of the gray cushions are flecking off.
They are the Velveteen Rabbit of crutches.
There are many ways to be broken,
and Brad is all of them.
After she was dead too,
I read in my mother-in-law’s journal
how grateful she was for me
so Brad would not be alone.
I thought how prescient because now
it’s just me here with him, and the nurse
who is funny and kind and fills up
the room and makes us feel
like things will be all right
but is also almost done with the staples
and on her way out.
Copyright © 2025 by Laura Read. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 7, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
