A chair in the middle of a

Large room. I sit at the center and

Call to an echo. I, Disfigured of heart,

A tendon torn and masticated, become 

A cripple yet again. Exiting the womb with a

Wound, a baby’s barren ribs. She took both legs and

Broke them. Yet still I learned to walk, and still she snapped the bone at the ankle. 

Crawling then, I dug my own exit through the 

Family flesh, singed it closed with a rage full flame, and washed my hands of it with the midnight mourning. 

Alone in the middle of the room, swallowed by the sadness of a black hole. 

Phantom limb

i am 10 sitting on the carpeted floor 

fiddling a loose string while i 

calculated the burdened economy of childhood 

i am 14 years old in a soccer field 

hair like burnt grass, twilight a glimmer on the 

twisted goal post with wrists warm as blood

i am 15 in the kitchen with an

overturned bottle of pills spilled on the

counter, decision heavy as a cadaver 

i am 22 on the top floor of a

concrete institution, throat tight as i

peer over the railing’s edge

i am 23 in a movie theater 

shivering in an empty evening showing,

silent as asphalt on the drive home 

i am 30 speeding down a highway

steering nowhere while my insides careen;

gravel corners sharpened by a car crash

 i am 32 safe in my bed 

the memory of it all an ache in my body 

while i forget to sleep