some things my sons would never hear,not from my reluctance to speak,or the thief that has silenced his mother’stongue, his grandmother’s tongue,turned the stare of the woman who, whenit’s far too early for the sun to be out,sees me turn a corner with a Newport,the sky & the ground as dark as the fear& yesterdays she swallows as she crossesinto what might as well be oncoming traffic,remembering a man from her past—stories my sons would not know,not because of a need to hide history,those bedrooms & boardrooms & workwhere trust became carnage;no, these things would be Pandora’s boxuntouched. & yet, they will know—because.& the because is what I tell my sons,about what their hands might do, in longconversations about what the handsof men do. Their hands, my own.When I was twelve, a friendtold me of men offering her moneyfor her slender & young body, sheno older than me then, arms not strongenough to carry her own weight, let alonepush her past the men who wantedto own what is hers. Hers just the firstof a story that would keep returning.The numbered hurt. Rape, its aftermath& this account of trauma my boyswould never know if the world differed,if war did not mean soldiers demandingthe body of a woman as land to plunder.I keep trying to turn this into sense.From me, my sons will hear a story abouthow hands like theirs, like mine, madesomething wretched of the memoriesof women we love or don’t know at all. Thisis true. & there is a map to take us toall that hurt. Some silence saying it all. Butlet’s say the world is ours. On that dayall the silenced tongues would havespeak, without fear of being doubted,of the cars & hellos that became dungeons,of friends who became the darknessthat drowns all until only rage & sadnessremain. & maybe after, we can buildmemory that does not demand silence;all the things that happen now, as ifa part of being, would not be—& my sons’ lives would be carvedout of days in which their hands& bodies do not suggest weapons,days where all their mothers& sisters can walk down any streetin this world with the freedomthat comes from knowingyou will be safe, after dusk or duringthose moments just before dawnunlike today, & yesterday, & now,when, the quiet & what might ruinit, is the threat that circles.