An Empty Box

My brother was sent away to military school
when he was in fourth grade.
A nun told my mother
that military school would
cure his stuttering.
Sixty plus years later
he still stutters.

His first year at St. Catherine’s
he hid an empty box of Valentine’s candy
under his cot,
at night he would take it out and smell it,
said it reminded him of home.

Mom gave him that heart-shaped
box of chocolates during that first year,
his nightly tears a lullaby,
the empty box a surrogate teddy bear.

Two years later he came home for good.
He left the box under his cot
hoping the next boy might find it comforting.