Parentage

You built me from the inside out.

Everything
in me. My bones, my blood,
the pocket that stores my heart
Each resembling
something in you. Or in the ones that made you.

You also manufactured my tomb. Sank
your hands into the flesh of new time
and when you held them up
they were from then on guilty.
What a magnificent sendoff
you gave me.

The bone chief smokes his pipe and warms
his drink. My heart
I see it beating!

A genius of many lives. Many lives
longer
than mine will be. Longer
than I will ever muster.

What is this life you gave me?
Closed between the hands of some
giant.

It is every day
an insolvable universe
enfolding the silk-haired souls
of new human eyes.

Wandering in the jigsaw blue

With lightning hands and clamshell hearts

Our parents. They pressed us through the godly mold. Did they?
Cheesecloth of eternity.

And still when they look at us, we remind them
of nothing recognizable, nothing comforting or familiar

but themselves.