Because I suspect
that I suck.
Because I have suspected it
all this time.
Because I literally
sucked my thumb until I was
thirteen and a half,
shamefully, inexorably, clandestinely,
pretending to my parents
that I didn't anymore.
(My mother knew, though.
She knew.)
Because my bar mitzvah was a fraud, my father
kissing me on the cheek, saying,
"Now you are a man
in the eyes of God
and our people." Because our people
included my cousin Naomi from Brooklyn
with the long black hair and frank
mischief in her eyes.
Because it was the right thumb, never the left,
because I tried the left, of course, but it didn't
satisfy the way the right one did
probably for reasons
anatomical. And because
my parents are dead now
and I suspect that I suck
figuratively, having pretended
to myself all this time
I was great.