in dead of dawn my phone beats me awake with a voice on the line
asking if I talked to you & I knew it was you she meant because your
texts just twelve hours back misbehaved & spilled your panic
I bypassed for sake of short-range saneness before warfare at the day gig
which happens to be a penitentiary masquerading as a school you said
you craved a break from all of the deadwood that makes you cower into yourself
that don’t seem like a break but a breakdown of a Black boy psyche stripped of its
joy & filed down to bone. you are not my kid, you are not my child but because you
ran into an alley & slept there all night among caustic tears, here I am thinking I can redeem
you even though I am a canoe rocked & unfloating in hurricane waters you are the cherub
I refused to create manifested as a seventeen-year-old high school senior & I can’t be
contained without grief attached. here go that abortion reminding me of my
crimed memory. I should not carry you as my own but I do & I am Sethe, a murderous lo-
ve, a shallow chip of nail I’d bite if the tip didn’t already fall off into my handsome head
of hair Sun I’ll never birth, you be blaze in a menacing moonless tunnel
when bells ring & you come strolling through with your deliberate dap, Jamaican
swag hanging from your halo I see promise, beaming brilliance: you can’t leave here without
ascenting through universe with what I’ve known since the roster squeezed your
initials, you be fire reaped
