There are parts of my body I no longer trust
the umbilical scar twitching with memory
and stillborn hope of a warm tissued bridge to security,
the dark undersea cavern and comfort of a uterine wall
I know the sensation in my navel is only
phantom pain and ghostly longing
she left me for 6 months
and when I saw her again she had cut her plait
and her voice had half lost the melody of home
and half learnt stranger cadences of strangers
and I cried at seeing her dead and alive and patchworked and zombied
parts of her saved in Crayola art thrown out
with the dead bodies of roaches and rat poison on newspaper sheets
as we moved from apartment to apartment in seedy Scarborough
Home is patchwork too, worn thin through
faulty memories filled with the fear of escalators
and festivals with always the chance of razor blades in apples
A sudden rush of empathy for Snow-White
and the misery of fairy-tales which will
always taste like pumpkin spice and cinnamon sting…
That’s what you get for immigrating in October
Part 2
The talus in my left foot after a hairline fracture threaded through
compact bone, stitching winter to spring to summer reminds me I am patchwork too –
with soft insides threatening to spill from seams
I suddenly seem
to see them everywhere and all the missing parts too
bone is dynamic tissue, grows and lives and that means bone can die.
carapaces protect beetles like my (brown) shell does me –
either indifferent footsteps leave us mangled on sidewalks
or we are cremated alive by those who take a spyglass and sunlight
to fry us with their “dispassionate” gaze.
I reached for his hand when I stumbled,
foot trembling against the leaning slant of a sidewalk
in a city on a hill
He let it go weeks later without telling me,
leaving (white) guilt –
like when he came too suddenly –
in my palm to(o) clean.
