to be honest i don't.
i remember becoming 'william'
who was shoved
into the story
of my name, i am
memories of colour
like "yellow"-
the first of the sunflowers and the stripe
of bee in wonder,
my mother called me away from
a swollen hand
as if nature were more cruel than
shade.
my fingers later would curl beneath
petals,
and that you
stain.
or coming home from school on the august path
when the wind kicks back and i am
another distanced yellow, this time smudged on concrete
slabs, i think i drew our family in crayon
and it rains tomorrow
but you're there in brightness
till the shade licks.
though this is cruel to me,
that i am born and that i have died
that your arms cradle
a fleece blanket with milk stains
so long dried that it seems to
map a crust of youth
like when sailors search
the night for every piece
of starlight, every sliver
of wind that will bring them
back to bones.
that is your grace holding me-
your pain that still clenches
blindly at something blue,
though it hurts with tenderness
your screaming nails cut my
memories into scrap paper
dolls that nest on the fridge door.
at something blue, or else,
something fainter than simply naming me
as yours, a throat of me
not the cold remorse of your tongue
imagining teeth of the prettiest white
as pretty as horses running paddocks
something clenched as i was
to your warm breast,
though at the time i couldn't pretend
and my tears wronged you,
you were strange after that,
you plied your hands at crafting nets
from animal bones, told me
we are trapped in
bodies we don't deserve-
i understand now, you thought life
was nothing more than
a river you could bend.
you bent my mouth into words
like 'love', like i was a son
you could catch in a jar,
splinter my heart to yours
and make me call it so.
make me say i am yours,
it becomes hard to picture anything
more cruel, more than being naked
or faultless, candle worms
its flame down to death
and it is the same death again
as that memory
a tense flicker and something like
a sermon of heat as i can still
hear your whimper
on my winter pelt- skinned
rabbit, you told me clean
that i wore my father's jaw
his eyes
his paleness.
now it seems that he was a ghost
that you unravelled from picked
threads- you started at my toes,
it was his skin, you yelled at me,
and you continued to alter with slivers
until i was a blood bag
my hair stuck like straw knives
in your skin- your hands so
sticky with his love,
his red offering,
yet you scrubbed him off silently until your skin
shone. it was like every bit of ugly had drained
and your heart so maimed with memory
forgets this
but i sift through colours like seashells,
till the blue returns with its soft memories
and the yellow, its bright flame
and the red can be let go like a balloon, that is you,
with love, my other heart, a storm of whispers
and a fist for this:
call it tenderness.
