Neighbors

The boy two doors
down likes to bite,
too, but his mother

makes him eat soap
after, and so through
the summer-propped

windows we hear their
struggles in the bathroom,
his shrieks as she grabs

his mouth, the slipping
as he knocks the bright
yellow lozenge from her

hand, and then sobs
for hours, a strangled
sound like a lawnmower

stuck on a plastic toy.
One day there's an ambulance
in their driveway, no one

will tell me why, and a week
later his sister breaks
my 101 Dalmatians record.

Then the whole family
disappears; I never even see
the moving trucks, but things
like that happened on our street.