the power line

the boy with one arm
in the neighborhood could
do everything you could,
and better, with his
baseball glove and bat,
but you still stared,
all the other kids
stared. you wondered
what it felt like.
the pink roundness
of his forearm,
the absence of a hand
with which to rely on.
you wondered how he
buttered bread, or combed
his hair,
or did a number of
mundane things you did.
you wondered how your
life would have
changed had it been you
to have grabbed the downed
power line.
he was different,
having been somewhere
we might never go.
in a place already beyond
the childhood we lived in.