Bear feet and sardines

remember when four milk beards could fit on the single mattress? the one we inherited from gran packed like sardines, head to feet our shack a fortress, despite the rain when mom used her enamel pots and buckets to catch the drops, creating a liquid symphony as it leaked through the corrugated roof the one dad always promised to fix the same holes through which moments before we counted an array of blinking stars when the moon’s bosom hung low hand me downs, hopscotch and hide and seek mom having a cadenza trying to find us when bedtime loomed remember when Marty was two and she had an asthma attack in the middle of that winter’s night when dad brought the coal galley in the house to keep us warm. her skin pale, and eyes deathly white rolled back into their sockets the look of desperation in mom’s eyes as she held her in her arms shouting for the Lord Almighty as her body went limp I never saw dad so helpless and Johnny grew a couple of years overnight keeping the rest of us huddled together assuring us that everything was gonna be ok. we hardly talk about those years but if I had to guess I bet we were closer to Jesus then