remembering tenderness

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.