My bedroom was so large,
and I was so small.

Cleaning it was such a task,
when organization
was so new, a nascent skill.

I didn't know then,
but I might have had a brother,
and our family was too poor.
Once, Mom was late, and
exercised her reproductive rights.
But afterwards, Dad
wondered aloud
if it was the right thing.

Bad timing.

And she hated him for two years,

starting here.

And when she found me in a pile of toys,
having failed at my singular task,
I can only imagine

   what she must have been thinking,
   when she took hold of my wrists,
   and suddenly the world spun

      the walls a kaleidoscope

a wail tore forth from her lungs,
a sound I'd never heard.

   And -- for a moment --
   I was flying

      a moment of weightlessness

      the moment she let go of my wrists

      the moment my spine hit the bedframe

      the moment all the breath exited my body

      the moment of silence in the wake

Never had she done such a thing.

      The moment the shockwave hit --

the moment my cry was truncated
with a "Shut up!"
And she could never admit that it happened.

It hurt her too much to know
that it did. I learned

that empathy is
a cross to bear, that some words
twist the knife
in someone else's skin.

So much

goes into being
    only just

a cold,
   dead,
      thing.

The hunt begins. The fur
of the white wolf
beckons me forth, along the trail
into the woods.

The smoke is the reminder of Her
initiatic journey.
The trap is set.

    She guides me into it.

Hope is a clever animal.

Pondering the inverse
relationship between
desire and disappointment:

After many lessons,
Anxiety answers Hope,
an I for an i.

The I formulates desire;

The i learns the folly
of attachment, and instinct
holds sway, a balloon

filling with
oxygen, a balloon

popping.

Needed what I never got --

got what no one should have --

now I yearn for what no one should,

and it hurts like
a dog tethered in the yard
barking its fool head off

and no one is coming home

The smell
   of smoke from my father's Winston
   in a Datsun Z
   on a hot day in California
        in the summer, the crinkle
        of a bag of chips

with the wind ripping
through the window, a skip
through the cities between
there and home

Childhood
memories like
ashes in an ashtray

Letting go of the pain,
it falls to the earth,

an anchor
to the torment of men,

a world on fire,
where I breathe smoke and dream
of a dreamless sleep.