The Night Before the Day That You Were Born

“Seven years ago tonight,” or

“Eight years ago tonight”—

I don’t remember when it ended,

This annual ritual,

My mother telling me about

The day I came into the

World. I don’t recall a

Thirteen years ago tonight, or twelve,

But who’s to say

I haven’t just forgotten? I do

Remember, age seven or eight, because

Those were the years when we lived in that house,

She pulled me from the shower

Slapped me

And showed me where someone had

Carved the word “fuck” into the

Pale oak of her dresser. Naked, wet

I stood accused,

Or worse, my guilt was already

Pronounced. I don’t know what I said

I suspect I denied

And likely cried. I don’t believe

I’d ever seen the word spelled out before

But I thought I spied a brother’s signature

In the stiff blocky capitals grooved into

The wood. Was there

A nine years

Ago tonight? How could

There have been

After that?

Andrew Edmund Kane is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn, New York, where he writes for NPR’s Ask Me Another and reads for the New England Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, The Normal School, The Rumpus, The Rupture and elsewhere.