The fall

I'm 13
Mommy's locked me in my bedroom
not by force
but with her words

I'm
afraid of my own body
and what it may attract

She
reads my sins aloud
from an unlocked diary
once under a mattress
and steals all my pens

I'm
left wordless,
three floors up and
aimed for the balcony

The real need for flight
comes with the curves of a women

And so I steal away the screen
and connect all the hangars
and all the leotards
and attach it to the bed wheel

We all knew it would snap
and my 13 year old limbs would smack on the barbecue
and my body would line with fresh bruises
alive in its new bones

At your first glance
I'll be thinly lined as if with a scalpel
and the knees will still bend
and the lung will still float

Come to my hand
The thick flab of skin
dangling from the thumb
Knuckles bared
a white bone

The flap from the nail to the joint.
an earlobe of flesh
Holding it in place
reconnecting to its root

Funny how pain distracts one
wrapping the wound
I return to prison
unlock the top latch
and stow away to my barred bed

Sink into the sting
Into the reality of gravity
I've found my vice