One more thing I'll never show my father.
I don't remember when I wrote the first draft, this year maybe. I quickly redrafted this again for a HAD submission where you had to narrate a writing piece through a voicemail. My friend called as I was speaking over the final and most important lines. He told me a story about his recent jiu jitsu session, and some minor details about planning our trip, whether or not I was excited to go on tour with his band this weekend. I was dissapointed that the only call I was to receive that day happened in the two minute window of a one of a kind lit submission that would not happen again. Oh well. I am not excited for the tour because I was kicked out of the band. I am excited for the tour because I will be with my friends and get to see my friends perform again. I killed my child already through making this html page. My poor blue cabochon, my sonorous plink, there's a dagger in your heart and my fingers twitch with guilt. One more poem I won't be sharing with my father.
Here's my reading of this poem without interruptions. Raw link: https://vocaroo.com/10RfAoBBqzM6
Seizure
When I was 10, I caught my father peering
to the small blue marble he kept near his heart.
Told me it knew every evil he's ever taken part in:
lust, arson, sloth, abandonment,
All the girls he's harmed, all the harm wrought,
all et cetera, et cetera
contained to a single drop.
When taken from its cavity, the marble
numbs at ones touch. Its weight tugs from your chest,
steering hands that seize unexpectedly.
The marble I keep stirs the same but gently,
and if you stare at it in the dark
the seer stones of the latter day
are stripped of their profundity.
I'm no messiah, I've known no angels,
and the little blue stone inside me
tells naught but of lost trials in passing space.
It's haunting knowing what histories
you've been placed between.
It's haunting watching patterns
you live out unconsciously
roll down straying paths of fate,
like a rollercoaster begged, then pleaded not to ride
by a petulant child with beaden eyes.
Mother carried his body in place,
and father, well-numbed to those eyes,
strapped the belt and signed off.
All The discarded parts are kept:
the inclusions, the faux-gilt affixes
to natural impurities,
drafts keen to be forgotten—
but they never are,
as all thats discarded is compounded upon.
That marble contains beauty,
nuance, truth puréed through mortal mistakes.
Mine was misplaced once and I was left weightless,
like all the living pieces of myself evaporated
while months rolled by unceasingly.
And even on the worst of worst days,
I can never seem
to gather the strength,
to find a nice pond,
to let him go.
