you are a bullet-wound of a girl
a story of punched-in windows &
broken lights & when you were born
the power cut out.
the first thing you remember is
your father's voice, but it does not
belong to you.
you are a space that takes up too
much, you are too loud &
too quiet & a surplus of everything &
you want to be the hole you
came from. you have sand in
your chest, a sick, strange emptiness,
you write the same things & cross
them out. this goes on for a while.
we've all heard this story before &
i've forgotten the ending.
where do you exist in yourself?
your eyes? your ears, your mouth
your chest your space & lack of it?
do you exist?
listen: it is that i have a body, but
not that i am one.
your uncle said loving you was
a secret you couldn't tell but you
never learned to keep your mouth
shut, did you?
a truth: he lied about it all. you
see him every christmas. he is
not yours. this is not a story of belonging
this is a story of breaking.
you're an echo of a girl, your sister's
name bouncing off the walls of
the family portraits, you're the
footprints not the filling the donation
piles of her old awards you are an
afterthought people waste too much
time on. give yourself a new name,
& it's not the right kind of new. you
need shoes that fit, not a name
that doesn't & you didn't ask
for this much skin.
you want to be a cloud & this
is something you've known all your life.
you are the grey area,
your mother's intonation &
your country's inflection, you
need WIT not brains BEAUTY but
if all else fails at least you'll have
yourself, a girl you're trying very hard to
forget blinking back at you in
the glass. j'accuse.