Beginning to Forget

My girlfriend came home from work
a day that I was having trouble writing
and told me about the Indian child
they had found in a box under the stairs.
His body was battered and he had been addicted
to cocaine — his leg had been broken
a year earlier and it had gone untreated and
unhealed.
His step mother changed her story a few times
and then there were the legal arguments,
I didn’t listen all that well,
but instead pictured a small body in a box.
I carried the picture with me
as I got ready for sleep, and in the morning when I worked
and when I did the groceries and when I cooked.
And now I try to think about it but the picture has
softened and blurred so it doesn’t bother me so much
and I can begin to forget about
the boy in the box under the stairs.