You don't remember being born

I can’t remember being born,
and no one else can remember it either.
Not even your mother. Or your mother’s mother.

In fact, your father and your mother,
are busy wrapping you in blankets,
placing you down to sleep like bomb disposal specialists,
holding your name on their tongue
like a key cooling in a forgery.

They are holding you like a loaf of hope,
an oblong of mercury, an eating machine.
The periphery is irrelevant, you are the cat’s eye,
the single bulb in a bare room of boxes.

They are planning life scripts,
following instructions, taking the manuals and acting
out the scene in which you come in and maybe you look a bit like
your great uncle, and maybe you look a bit your second cousin
and maybe you look like an edit of their own faces.

They are locking you into grid position,
holding you to their clavicles for lamp-lit 4 am feeds
humming to the wisdom of the washing machine.
You are developing in the dark room of your eyelids.

And this might seem all very ordinary,
but you will need this.

There will be days when the locks jam,
when automatic door sensors will seem confusing,
there will be rude people, trains to miss,
songs which hurt the best bits.

You don’t remember being born,
and no one else can remember it either,
but your parents, they sung you synapses.