I took my boy to hear an echo.

He wanted to hear one. I wanted him to.

We wended through a hand-formed unintelligible …

… brushy wood to a place I knew called “cave”.

It had openings at both ends …

… and could be seen through, not into.

Nor was it a tunnel, strictly, though it passed …

… through the ground, though it went somewhere.

It was like stepping into a telescope unseen, …

… into the dark distorted center.

The walls were arched and laid with glazed tiles, …

… orange, aqua, muddy green and so …

… streaked with nervous lines where water had run down, …

… where water must have trellised down still.

It was not clean. It smelled of piss.

Chicken bones, empties, old rubbers, mold.

Echo, I called. So did my boy.

But his voice was small – birdscratch – it …

… got all lost inside the echo my voice made; …

… pale echo, barely one.

That was when I had a boy.

I’m quite sure I did.

I wanted one, back then, when I had something to offer, …

… when I wasn’t in this place, where light passes through me, …

… when I wasn’t like this, …

… which is what, …

… when I wanted one,
as he, poor boy, wanted me.

Cave, Mark Levine

 

Photographies by May Bucilliat