Poem that I would love suggestions for....

Going Without

Upon interviewing single mother of two daughters, one of whom living with cerebral palsy, I was struck by her statement that she no longer tells others that her daughter is waiting for government services at this point, but that after twelve years of unanswered cries for help from an uninformed government, she simply says that Caroline “goes without…”

your little body, contorted and confused

as if sopping up air, parachuting from me

you said wait ‘till you hear me laugh

except you wrote it in the air

your legs like the praying mantis, pinched at foot

and blown like the ribbed, plastic bubble wand

left to contortions, twists, and wire-like limbs

your little body rests itself as an upside-down U

you are swaying from one elbow crevice to another

and I am saying that I can do it

so I do it

but exert need when you can’t see me crying

you can’t see me crying, while you grow knees

and knees grow you into gauze circumventing

vocal chords, bronze but green, golden but not

threaded in patterns that make you say:

hi mom because you never knew how to

cast on, but you knew how to hold your

words, dangling from strings of parachutes

inside me, so that I may hold them in the same

space I once held your crinkled legs

and fly them to you on paper airplanes when you

most needed expression you had only held out to me

in cupped hands—small, sewed on, yet teenage

though you needed lifting, alloy substitutes, sight through air bubbles

you give me a day and my head floats

in silent skies, in your laughs and salty toes

once stuck in waters, ink pools stagnant:

contradictory to the intended whirling nature,

your little fists clench a cob-webbed scrap of parchment

donning names, old, whose heads float and toes sit

pruning, dry yet frozen

escorting the mantis, he kisses your twisted legs

and you laugh with a young raspy brilliance

and as if to write on the air with raspy words

you say that the time goes quicker if we ride in parachutes

but since i bore you, you’ve put your green hands

on either side of mine and said pray

because though I wait by your side

while you challenge my hands

that shake, almost always, neurotically

holding you because you’re still that

contorted flicker than once lay inside me

holding strings that you said not to cut

but not once listed, and when we asked for new ones

stitched, hopefully unnoticed

they said, you’re just small, you’re just small

and though we wait to jump the plane,

goggles sealed tight

readying our stances, your chair

wheeling itself to the edge,

but I wish someone else could catch it

by its handlebars, tumbling

for your protection, but then you step

slipping passed air bubbles

that have left us stuck for twelve years

and though you silently shout to the air,

to everyone: I’m not small, I’m not small,

you—are small, but heavy with words you

can’t tell me, and though I must push, lift, and hold you,

you carry me back to the sky

because below is not ours yet

to run around, laugh, to let our legs dangle

I’m not small, you say—from your

Readable head to my eyes—

And we sit without treasures of lower clouds

Going without, because you’re small