The Steel Gray Nail

By Tim Mayo

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I'm looking at a gray photograph

my foster sister sent me years ago,

set in a small, silver frame, dulled
by time and memory. In it, my foster

parents pose, clothed in their different

shades of gray clothes: Albert in his bib

overalls that were really faded blue

from pushing wheelbarrows in the sun.
A loosely defined laborer by trade, he raked

clams in the waist-deep waters of the bay,

and pushed the weight of work—dirt,

cement—whatever needed to be moved
to the here and there of its final place,

then lullabied me to sleep at night.

Nannette standing beside him in her

seemingly charcoal and floral smock,

which was actually indigo with yellow

flowers splattered like suns against her
night-colored dress. Purse against her chest,

comptroller of the one-income family I left

not by choice but left nonetheless, what other

worries and sad losses did she carry in her

third bosom besides bills and bank books?

But the photo is as silent as it is gray
as they stand gray-haired against the asbestos

shingles of their house (which were, in fact,

gray). And today, I contemplate not the efficacy

of their home's armor against the weather,
but the world's unpredictable proclivities

that shingles could not protect against,
the invisible people who controlled our lives,

when, at five, I jumped on a pile of broken

siding with all the rage of wanting to break

things because I had to leave, and the shingler,

who pulled the steel gray nail from my foot,

then carefully placed it in the small box
of my heart as if to say, Remember this.