January 3, 2017
Peeling back the layers, easy as waxy adhesive pleasingly pulled back from a band-aid strip, you might find underneath
the muffled amniotic sound of my mother’s fear, my father’s absence,
and her mother’s lung cancer, his two pack a day habit,
her father’s leukemia, his brother’s stomach cancer,
my sister’s jealousy, me, smack dab in the middle, ordered
induced, long-labored, lost virginity to a lie,
adolescent somnambulant, anesthetized
plucked peak, poised, cut in half, abandoned childhood
love, anger, pain, salty wounds and tears, trials
errors, risks and high cliff jumps, all of it, all of the skin’s striata.
And yet, and yet, still, it’s the new year, and
I’m dressed in the same uniform, repressed ire,
suppressed desire, tempered expectations, doubt
longing, trust, fomenting flames, and churning torrential inward glances.
I’ve heard my ancestors’ voices mute, in a gesture, a turn,
phrases never uttered, lovingly eked from un-warmed fingers tapping.
Beneath the eviscerated bowels, below the libido, homonidae snapping heads aside,
peer over their shoulders, wide-eyed, and slack jawed, unsuspecting
after all, for who would have known, how could she predict, she just up from all
fours, awaiting death-birth, a notion less cerebral than pelvic, yet
surely her demise and liberation? No, her gaze reveals she never conceived, never saw me coming.
ape-monkey/pixabay
In the gaze of the other 