Horse
The first time I sit on a breathing animal,
his reins in my palms
like something I am tasked to protect,
I can almost be running with equal purpose,
not bothered by the moving on
or the leaving behind. Placing my cheek
on his carpet of worn furs, it is like
resting on Grandma’s hands,
at the hospital where she prepares us
for the journey she must forge
alone. Already my palms hurt
from the labour of resisting
what no one understands
as grace. When the time comes
I shall know whom to believe.
Darwin
Then, like the most natural thing, I feel
disappointed at the disappointment
of being their son. Two decades ago
my parents welcome me, as if with scrutiny
comes ownership, and over the years
I learn as much as they learn
about themselves, how parenthood
defies one’s capacity for love
and tolerance for neglect. Sometimes
in the benevolent grasp of night
I wake up, as sudden as a newborn’s cry,
to how I will never become
better than what my body has allowed me,
what hurt is rewarded to my parents
by this inevitability. Then
my eyes betray the depth
of its timid pools, my face
conducting its own baptism
to atone for what is never committed.
So here lay the fraying
limits of parental responsibility. When
I walk into their room like a sinner
approaching the confession booth,
what do the ones who have given me life
know about love? What self-righteous
punishment? For once
the television would be muted, all walls,
all light, and before them
the fruit of their tiresome love
broken from its stem.
Scab
Peeling it off
in half-slumber,
my fingers
aroused by the scent
of pliant tissue, such are
the ways the body
destroys itself: angiogenesis,
fibroblasts, granulation,
how Grandma nurses
her fear of sleep before
waking to her surprise.