I’m starting to believe elasticity is a virtue
vibrating ringtone. My begrimed hands never
content with flash, they want rain. Is He
conspirator, is He artist? Before I was
boy, man or any of it, I was tiny skull gifted
with life. From the sanctum of mother, winged
fist of father. But now I’m unable to wrap
my head around origins. See how my mother
won’t wear the shades I’ve brought her.
They’re too nice for me, she says. She won’t
look at my sky with those, sticking with her bars
of space through prisoner’s window. I yank my hair,
regrow scalp. This house I loved, a boy of ten
sliding across mosaic floor on roller zinc knees,
rattling capitals of countries like it was rap.
Oh such levity I found in naming lands unknown.
I’m still pining for garrulous joy, such is the tongue’s
urgent love for eloquence. Through time, a body
becomes the stranger it needs. How the mounting
nose denies the eyes a view of pouted lips, their seasonal
fleshing, their chapping. In love too, how a thin stretch
of skin lipping the space between fingers nourishes
another hand. Isn’t it life affirming how things in duress
demonstrate elasticity? Take my mouth for instance―
valved sickle in joy, grief. O while belching, at rebirth.
