we're all secrets on repeat

R: I mean I met her after 2 years then after we met a couple of times and then I didnt wanted to meet her again cause it was going back again to what we had

J: You didnt tell me

R: I didnt tell anyone

J: You didnt tell me.

R: I didnt tell anyone

Didn't I tell you to do all you can to be okay

beautiful and not yet dead, like Ray Lamontagne like Brian Molko (unlike Buckley and Nick Drake and Elliott Smith)

Do not even mention the T word

We are All Equal

I am the son my father made

after breaking canes through me, the girl

my mother wanted me to stay, bartering

hunger for a little more time.  A man I thought

I was, rising up to a punch in the face

because there  is no pain, only
a woman, so I will ask for another

blow and then launch my own

because we are all equal.

Origami of Wrapping

The cake is a strange
ornament on the table,
haloed by candles burning
ridiculous in the day.
The song in the background
by family obligated to
an occasion, not an allegiance
to me and I am amused
at how it is known and unspoken.
I try to be grateful for the parcels, even their
impending disappointments masked
by paper cosmetics and
the origami of wrapping, almost
like my guests enveloped
in their own gift bags to conceal
bad surprises. I am fixated by the quickly
wizening candles. Brittle
black wicks stripping pure
girl pink into irregular puddles
on cream, no past grace
of sculptured spirals and form.
The flames quaver before dying
from my sweep of breath.
I feel the candles’ relief,
extinguished from their duty.
There are cheers as I await
 the largest token slice.
25 crumbling in my mouth,
a new year that tastes tentative,
and everyone’s subsequent departure,
sweet.

Descend-in-reverse

I view descend-in-reverse, aligning
my neck and sight to the building’s height.
I dream better when there are still

gaps to fill in: the trajectory of my flight
before sprawling onto the tarmac.
Dissecting the adage of being broken,

I am actually whole, bones still
fused and a heart beating articulate
against the mind’s silence.

So it is the mind which breaks
from pain, binding to receptors,
tightening their pathways

that escape as topography of my palms
I memorize for ownership, so
the decision after this is mine alone.

Looking for Others

In the mirror, I am looking for others.
The boy my father wanted after I remained
stoic at the number of canes he attempted
to break through me. The girl my mother wanted
me to stay, starving me for a little more time.
I try the lens of my late grandmother, unmoved
but crushed by my betrayal of skin a concentrated
tea wash she could not to hide her disdain from.
I imagine the racist woman from the coffee shop
barking my order back in bad English,
because she hurt to hear
her language misappropriated.
Another woman kindly complimenting
the arcs and tones I manoeuvre
easily because Mandarin can be a feat.
From the words of an ex, I see fetish
and a social ladder, its steps broken .
I hold all of me together in the mirror
and they fit. All colours inside the outline,

not a shard missing. But they crumble
so quickly, my palms unable to stretch enough to
hold these pieces, already broken.

The woman at the coffee shop looks
at me suspiciously right after I ask
for toast. Is it the minted tan
and kohl bracketed eyes that
have suddenly claimed my right to speak
the language I ordered in?

If I have weapons that threaten her
perception of reality wider than the
one she knows, then these weapons are
my eyes that repeat a skin colour
she cannot understand.

She hands me my bread in
Mandarin, a bullet she fires I must
bite or dodge before I am denied.

My manners debut in English:
since a language cannot bridge,
I speak another to hope it divides us further.

Fertility

I was land, unfed into an arid geography.
Transpired, slowly into long branches hoping to scratch
for something. Cracked into tessellations,
soil hardened into clay. My roots retracted,
free from being weighed to the ground. Now I am
just earth.