A boy fleeing his countenance in a country

Is a disintegrating thing in fire. A mirror

Of me or a mirror of you hoping running

 

Is the same thing as setting free. like the smoke.

His footfalls, glowing hyacinth a place watches 

Unglow. Calls it dreams. Watches him become

 

One with a sidewalk that wouldn’t save him

Or the rabid fire in his marrows. In his defense

Isn’t it a curse to have spikes for hands that

 

Bleed faces rather than wipe tears? What is

This type of napalm-ness if not how God hand

-picks boys and says they’re mouths and pulls

 

And pulls and pulls a tooth then throws them

In waters for baths, or baptism before a crow

Finds its voice in the smoking wind. How we

 

Become fears pouring into nightmares. 

So, picture this: a boy sweating in waters and 

Every drop of his sweat keeps pixelating into a 

 

Memory of leaving things. Of waters that failed

To save the wilting hyacinth in him. A constellation

unconstellating. So we hold too much fire & sink

 

after mistaking it for light. Waters on the therapist’s

Desk searching for what sinks the most between

Absence & memories. A pill to suture a place longing 

 

Departure when the clouds engulf our innards on nights

Of bittered bloods that draw curtains of volcanic ash 

above them.