fence posts

24 Oct 2007

Roz once said that you don’t lose
your virginity, you grow out of it.

There are parents you
talk to in this world,
and parents you love
who exist only in your head.

With depression and
perhaps other wasting diseases
you don’t get to pick.

By a thousand little deaths
you grow out of your parents.

The Love Laws are broken.
You want to trust, or perhaps not,
but your judgment on this bet
is too often wrong.

I am at worst a refugee tonight.
Fed and housed, employed and scared
thinking of a perhaps still standing house
where they used to trace the circles
silent, screaming, up and down
the stairs, bed to bathroom,
sometimes stopped midway by
urge to hurt herself. We got in the way.

I look more like her everyday
and I fear again I ate
her breath, being born, again.
Again baffled by the sacrifice
our bodies have interrupted
between her body and the floor.

She taught us first to catch
bread dough, tossed through
chilly light in winter
kitchen laughing hours.

Despite my new-found self-
preservation, I want to ask.
Why are you punishing yourself?
Do you really like burnt toast?
How much do you have to yell
and how exactly did you try
to hit him with a fence post
on a Monday in late October
to rouse the old Italian ladies
next door from their gardens
to call the cops.