pisoulo

I am my mother’s body, fatigued and slow, yet tainted with the marks of summers past in vans, on beaches, in the world. I am her careful gaze across the yard, watching the world spin as much as watching the birds fly. I am her suicide notes, written and forgotten. I am her telling me to drive safely. I am my mother’s dark bedroom, her worn furniture, the space for the dog at the end of the bed. I am my father’s quiet moments, his wrought hands and dirty boots. I am the fire in his eyes and the sickness in his tummy and the warm blood that won’t stop beating. I am the page on which he scrawls he’ll be back, the reasons he is not. I am the metal clanging on metal in his bag and the laughter that fills the air in the evening, when everything has fallen away. I am all of the stories he won’t tell. My insides are the ocean and I am deep and wild and dark. I am a place for the ashes, a grave for the unburied, a tombstone for those without names. My eyes are the sky, home for the floating