That Jesus gave one the smell of the back of his hand to comfort himself with when threatened. That one never lifted his feet when he walked. And that when one put a fist in his mouth at AWANA and made terrible distress sounds at me, the other two clapped at their padded headphones and keened like Cyclopes.

I tried to be calm. Their helper came at a pace that suggested she would walk through me. I backed away like a hummingbird. Hovered.

And then disappeared.

I think I can say that the parents’ suffering did not diminish their faith. Amen. It would have mine. One triplet is throwing up monstrously over a closed toilet. The other in his bathwater. The third on his knees into a register.

God. God. God. God. God. God.

And my name in Gaelic means handsome by birth. Kind, honest.  

And God’s perfect will is the good for all people. I have to believe.

The triplets live now in a home for intellectually disabled adults. Will they learn to clear tables? Be led expressionless by expressionless service dogs? Stare when a gift store visitor makes nervous conversation?

Will their clothes always have the faint smell of curtain dust?

No mother, no father, no wife, no child.

Tonight each sits in his own apartment room. One swallows sewing needles. One swallows a spool of thread. And in his room, the third, who startled me long ago, draws a string of needles from his mouth, the needles swaying like bottles as they come, spaced on the thread in perfect, delicate intervals.

Bird Report

{Pay attention to dead birds. Goldfinch in the road. The Colonel poses this question: where are they all? They should be underfoot, as numerous as acorns.

Pay attention to which birds perch on wires and which don’t. Doves always. Starlings always. In the summer, swallows—choirs of them. Two wires. Two rows. Etc. Kestrals. Always just one—and never stays perched when my car approaches. Right before I pass: leaps from the line like an athlete off the bench.}

July 15. Morning. Blue Jay somewhere near top of tree. Loud. Louder.