Fragments of sand
sift through calloused toes
raw with wrinkled
scraps of yellowed memory.
Blue sun on cue
spinning surrealism
like some Tanguy canvas
stretched across eternity
like your eyes
white with splinters
of big bang residue
collected in caverns
of expanding light.
family court fucks up being a child. adopted by my grandmother,
born when mom was 16, i think. i choose not which man but which
boy i might become. i remember migrating. three, yet no parents.
then court saying the boy old enough to choose this time.
in 4th grade, visitation rights allowed me my moms
& she was a fly hood moms, she had edges, my mom still
calls herself "a bird". this how she loves herself. i think. i didn't
get the chance to know her how nests know branches.
i tap her and custody paper fall like bird feathers onto the floor. here
black foster homes are broken trees. & i hatched from the system
perpetuating itself wherein most poems don’t make it out.
mom came to me
when i was five, & seven, a couple times like
you know
i'm your mother,... right?
i say yes
she must need to know i know.
& this is how i love my moms, i think. &, i know i inherited her flinch
at those that say
they'll “fly,” yet they'll
“...return.”
when mom can’t find
word to peck - i tell her
i wasn’t able to mosaic
whichever promise that my father left inside as shrapnel, but
i want to.
& even after i am a pile of feathered bone dancing
into dust, i still might not find “enough”. but
i did make sure to keep searching for it, for
whomever needs them a man. i dig & claw a way with
wings, & like a god in nest,
gray clouds escape under me as mists, or his myths
& i bite, chew grit through
where the his absence emptied, like thunder, into my nest,
like
“wow. is this a cage i bit too? this want to be enough
for you - how my mouth mistakes birdcage for
stubborn twigs? was dna what st(r)uck as storm & let
blood somersaults across my body? this whole time?
this why i was born unmade? because since birth i
was thrown in this cage wherein not a thing in it
rattled like a parent's love? how? did my father think
i was a Phoenix? these his ashes he forgot in me, or
am i burning? & is that a lock? i only know five
answers for certain...”
1. i am not my father’s Phoenix.
2. home must be wherever we kiss to keep the
warmth in & shut the smoke out.
3. neglected & abandoned are fires that could only be
manmade.
4. vaseline -athing protects the skin from crisps
because some boys’ wings hurt more, burn better,
than the birds.
5. lightning. who knows if it’s what he left me, or why
he left her. but if my father’s answer for why he gone
had a name, it would be lightning.
i pop a turquoise tic tac on my tongue
lingering on a cold dream
my desk is scattered with dead plants
and thank you notes from people i don’t know
i miss my old therapist
i miss my dead dog
i miss my ex abusive lover
there are sex scandals
a rape testimony on the news today
i’m sitting in a open air cubicle
listening to my organs die
i think about the her and all of the hers
i think about me
the times i never really said yes
i didn't say no
i teared into the pillow
or with eyes closed
thinking about the laundrynail polish
i don’t know if any of that counts
i don’t know if
i count
a lot of it i can’t remember
i wasn’t my full self
i was asleep or,
rather,
something else
so i tell myself it never really happened
i tell myself i never really happened
they were never there
neither was i
i suck the tic tac so hard
my tongue starts to bleed
the color coating is gone
it's a hard shell
no color
it dissolves into my mouth
When asked about my first time, I think about
Wheat fields on my windowsill—
a golden sliver sprouting through
my plush red velvet curtains.
A slick lick of sweat up my spine,
accompanied by an
uncomfortable explosion of heat.
It crawls inside the ring of my bellybutton,
proposing itself on crooked knees
but I am the one folded in half.
Most girls talk about their first time
with bottled anticipation: to be bent back
by the weight of some young boy
onto his childhood bed—
the back of his car—
the sea-green couch his parents bought
during their first year of marriage,
but now they live in separate houses.
Most girls act as if they had
unhinged some long protected secret.
As if they suddenly knew how to
fuck with freedom and laugh, untouched,
at catcalls (water off a duck).
But I am a slow learner and
don’t know how to swim.
When asked about my first time,
I think about wheat fields on my windowsill—
Moths, moths, moths.
The grandmother who still smiles out from a turnip carved
to be mostly teeth and watching, to house a heat and shimmer
that will leave it just like it leaves all things
can help you. You leave this unburied knot, this knob,
a glass of water, every night, and let it prove to you
the people you love are not lost,
that you in seeking out the voices of the dead
are found enough forever.