This Cold Hollow

How did I know that you had left me before I knew the words for empty, lost, bereft?  Before my birth scar?  Before I witnessed the guillotine of your contempt?  Before I could control my bowel, or tie my shoe, or awakened trembling in the night. Before you scoffed at me as I learned to walk.

A wild bird born in a shoebox senses an unknown world through its wings; a child through the smell of cigarette tar on net curtains; through warm piss in a cold bed; and the distance he can spit through the school railings.

Like bread stolen from the poor, I anticipate the tension and release of a hunger that rises and falls beneath my sternum, not in the empty belly.  Thrown back upon myself, my terror swarms like Starlings and ground glass into the shadow of a hook I put around my neck.  Around every look I give you.  Into every time you look askance.  Into your hard edges; your coy softness with others.  I become sawdust to your floor.  And you, unreachable, no matter the denials, the blood spilled, or the threat of life or death.

Empty parking space.  Trees without leaves.  A sky without a Sun.  Rain on the back of a hand.  Space without belonging.  There is no place for me.

And so, I learn to forget myself as I too am forgotten.  The way we all forget a shrub, a drain cover, or algebra.  I forget my hunger in an effort to forget the pain of you remembered.  I let the door swing on my hand to bring me from old to new, uncomplicated pain; to rescue my longing from your death coil.

I forget the throat-ache of my sorrowful song.

Instead, I stand on stage with a side parting, no cleft palate; no club foot; no Tiny Tim of brace and buckle.  I worry about money and diplomas and cancer, and whether everyone on Earth will share the double helix of your eternal absence and indifference, in this cold hollow.

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