“James must know how to cry because he hasn't cried yet and I know he's waiting for that one moment to cry like it was five hundred years of tears.
He ain't walked anywhere and there are no blisters on his soles but there are dreams worn clean into his rib cage and it shakes and shakes with each breath and I see he's trying to talk when he grabs at the air behind his head or stares up at the sky so hard.
All of this temperature rising hot and I set James down in the shade by the basketball court and I play and I play until the sweat of my body makes it rain everywhere on the reservation. I play and I play until the music of my shoes against pavement sounds like every drum.
Then I'm home and I watch the co*kroaches live their complicated lives.
I hold James with one arm and my basketball with the other arm and I hold everything else inside my whole body”