swans

i drowned in a farther distance there, 

rohit, 

where me and father fished once for mother otter, 

she was our liberation, she was "our thing";

and all i could remember rewriting - was i wearing a red, striped checked shirt? my glasses were caught up from fog; the smudges on the spec of my glasses,

i tried to argue as i trembled, stuttering,

my flask of plate flashed on me bright with the butter on it,

the weaponry was my cutlery, 

and then we were suddenly moving out, 

i told him,  "i wished i didn't belong here.."

i spiraled as i'd hole in,

a faint little hum shimmered like a cymbal from my narrow, ribbed chest;

a faint little quiver;

all from the wit of my flimsy hands; 

it told me almost nothing; posters flew about on my dirty wall,

and then it took me, 

i burned from the fact that i was alive; 

and every animal in me sprung about ferociously,

all these years of harrowing;

the moment my pain was abyssal,

asphyxiating every cavern of my throat; 

it twirled around my body; my world stemmed from a million other possibilities, 

i grew so skittishly restless that every part of me shivered, ached, screamed manic,

i wish i could emphasize that enough when i say, i've never had a chance to even exist,

and every pain about it gutted me in bits;

i've wanted to kill myself for so very long now from it. i wanted to get rid of all that upsurge within me.

i groaned with every slint of it!

spots sore and bulge in grandeur in cold fall around,

it turned autumn.

spotting on my skin,

i bordered right along on the edge of my pathetic, weak limbs,

i couldn't bear living anymore worth a spittle on the road;

i've lived with it for so briefly, so unbearably long. 

where's the otter?!!! where is the dad you promised??! 

the hatred for my parents extended deeper, sharper than i'd held a blade for them.

tied in a ribbon, 

the edges of it trimmed;

i realized i was not who i am twitching;

welling into a million sentient years from everything that was condensed brown and heavy beneath me.

so much so everything that was buried beneath like i'd given truth;

and vase and the take-holder for the vessel of my skin and everything that i contained within was all rot and i'd become the substance i fervently grew to realize,

mother said i wasn't even real, 

my skin blurred; 

i escalated into a flight as the lever pulled;

my shirt seered as my own differences that grew vines to the roots of my feet and sprung out peeking, like clever little branches, 

my twigged, nimble feet; 

i thrashed hard to the shore;

my neck bent my mother's will.

in solicited beans.

*

in all of its totality,

skinning apart the deer from his body, the haze of his guitar had bewitched me;

whined about how his face and body were so different he could never fit in;

he's not holding back, his pretty lips, 

"so much ever ended up being an effort to prove my worth to something; and it gutted me how much i've never had a chance to live first."

he died on the fifth birthday of my daughter.

his flesh was blast. his blood bled smoothly on the sickle of his perpetrator. 

his threads and buttons were untied. 

his face was smothered into a flower.

his bones cloaked, piercing into my flesh.

his death was all we prayed in reluctance.

his death was all we pitied him.

his hatred hasn't died but has lived on with us;

his suffering still lives.

airborne. 

i'll always loathe you.

*