Sara Wallace
The Perfect Stage
— “Be the Least in the Household of God,” Francis of Paola
Come and watch me screw up,
my son said.
So, I went to his school’s concert
but the music teacher
put him in the back
behind the piano,
his face shadowed,
hidden by the music stand.
I sat there clapping for Brittney
and tall wide Luna
with her rough braid,
for slight redheaded Asher
and smiling Chip,
for bongo drummers and violinists,
for sopranos and bass players,
my son just outside
the lip of the spotlight,
the black outline of his hair
stirring under the fan
like an uncombed bush.
At his first concert,
back in Francis of Paola,
the Special Ed preschool,
there wasn’t an orchestra
or an award-winning music teacher
to put my kid in the back.
There was the small ledge
of a crude stage, folding chairs,
parents on lunch break,
some in uniform—
coats on their laps,
caressing their creased programs
as gently as they would their child’s face.
And my son’s voice rose
among them for one bruised moment—
silvery as a pocketful of dimes,
pure as the love
I wish the world was made of—
before it broke mid-song
and he just quit singing
and lay down on stage
in corpse pose, one hand outstretched,
spreading and closing his fingers
against the light.
I wonder where
the perfect stage is for him—
one that’s not too dark or too light,
where he doesn’t have
to choose between hiding and soloing,
parents with strange closed faces
clapping no matter what he does.
Sara Wallace is the author of The Rival (University of Utah Press). Her poems have appeared in Agni, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Daily, Yale Review, and elsewhere. A neurodivergent poet with low-frequency hearing loss, she supports students with disabilities at NYU, where she teaches. She lives in Queens.