“We  wanted more.  We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped are spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats, we wanted rock.  We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six matching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.

We wanted more flash, more blood, more warmth.

Always more, always hungrily scratching for more. But there were times, quiet moments, when our mother was sleeping, when she hadn’t slept for two days, and any noise, any stair creak, any shut door, any stifled laugh, any voice at all might wake her, those crystal, still mornings, when we wanted to protect her,  this confused goose of a woman, this stumbler, this gusher, with her backaches and headaches and her tired, tired ways, this uprooted Brooklyn creature, this tough talker,  always with tears when she told us she loved us, her mixed up love, her needy love, her warmth, those mornings when sunlight found the cracks in our blinds and laid it self down in crisp strips on our carpet,  those quiet mornings when we’d fix ourselves oatmeal and sprawl onto our stomachs with crayons and paper, with glass marbles that we were careful not to rattle, when  our mother was sleeping, when the air did not smell like sweat or breath or mold, when the air was still and light, those mornings when silence was our secret game and our gift and our sole accomplishment –  we wanted less : less weight, less work, less noise, less father, less muscles and skin and hair. We wanted nothing, just this, just this.”