Lory Bedikian: My Son Rests His Cheek on the Wrecked Car

An act can be many things at once.

We can be deliverers or takers both.


Was he saying thank you to the airbags,

thank you to the chassis for its metal


promise to stop the impact short of

breath and body and the bureaucracy


of the outside world. Praising all of it

today. Praising the collision recalculated


that it could have been worse. Where

is poetry if it is not at the base of


the wreck. Rich said it clearly. So clear

we could see the ocean’s bottom


as if the glass had been emptied out

from one last sip. My son and then


my other son and then the one

who knows what I’m talking about.


What if I say I want this poem to bless

you, the reader. Will you take it? Will


you trust that it, line by line, truly

means to protest harm, means well?

Copyright © 2026 by Lory Bedikian. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 29, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.