He eats at the table alone. A bowl of cereal. Bent over, head dipped down, neck curved, the bones of his spine like knuckles in a fist. I don’t know how he gets out. But here he is like this always in the early morning light. The gray slant of it. There’s no yellow shine of breaking day. Just gray, white, silver-blue light that hits the surface of the counter, the table, the floor, breaking open only itself, making it hard to see.
Every night I put this boy to bed behind the wall. We can’t have him walking around alone at night while we sleep. I tell him that we do this because of my insomnia. He says nothing. Just eats his cereal. The white milk dripping off the spoon, back into the bowl.