No name

There is not enough material to work,
your weathered hands are scarred from war;
and they search every inch of my body for ownership.
Perhaps when I am old enough to balance your fingertips
between my own, like tiny poems being drafted
over and over again. I won’t cry when you leave;
and I’ll recite my poetry only by memory.

Sounds, touch and taste won’t make me feel sick,
when I am finally born and your shaking palms-
flatten the first hairs on my oily head.
I was the only child on our ward to be born with my clothes on,
only undressed with his eyes; flesh for flesh.
But this is no equal transaction I do not know pain.

My bones formed along the fault-line of your love,
where my tiny body is tugged from pillow and post.
When I reach three I struggle to remember my address,
I try to recall which parts of myself to piece together
in a mirror smeared with my sister’s nail polish;
a smudged half smile for my father and mother’s equal praise.

We play with the sun beaming against our olive skin
until we turn brown and I feel happy that I am so dark,
nobody can guess at my heritage. I am anonymous.
Slipping away like shadows puppets being broadcast by my ecstatic sister.
Where her eyes slip into my skull and I fill my papery skin
with her laughter, collect our stories and paint myself new.