& just like that, my happiness was gone

before I learned to use my own mouth.
I was neither a boy nor a story.

don’t get me wrong, at the sound of my lungs 
stretching, my mother, on the birthing bed,

thought of my father; how he looked at her
& saw a sorry thing. then, without saying a word

he handed me over, like a warning. it’s her favorite
lie to tell. when I am done listening, I pull my face 

from my pocket, it’s soft, swollen. I press my fingers 
into the bruises, I wonder who they belong to. 

from the spaces between my fingers, I watch a gallery of truths
climb out, thorned & restless. each one whispers how the world 

has always been evil to my kind. to live is to chew on struggle,
to swallow it raw. I put the truths in my mouth. they burn, 

taste like sin, like a wound failing to heal. somewhere, 
a boy dreams which is as dangerous as breathing. he stacks his father’s bones

on top of his father’s father & the ghosts only grow longer.
he collects the palms of his mother, places them on his chest

like a prayer, waits for them to grow into something
resembling his safest place. but beneath his feet, there is only ground, 

& somewhere below it, a voice. it laughs before it shatters.