you shall love your crooked neighbor

for my eighth birthday
i got a toy train set
my father helped assemble.

my job was to hand him
pieces of track and re-light
the cigarettes that went out

in his mouth. halfway
through, i asked him
where babies come from.

he told me that eight years
ago today i showed up
on the front stoop

in a cardboard box, how
he spent the whole afternoon
putting me together,

just like this train set,
that i was probably lucky
the box arrived on a saturday.