homes raze 1. i don't remember being born. the first few years of my life are a dim collage of cracks and clefts where memories might have been made. all i have is what was given back to me by the thin gauze of videotape: plastic eaten as an act of defiance. walking without talking. learning to read before my mouth can mime the words alive inside my mind. beating out a broken rhythm on a cardboard box. a serrated scar my eyes can't find. i know who my allies and enemies are. here's huey lewis with the news. 2. a garage door gores the dominant hand of a man who isn't fit to be a father. a doomed birthday cupcake dies halfway up the front stoop. the first fear i can name is a disembodied mouth on a tv screen that hasn't yet been stolen. the second is the woman who built me in her belly for the better part of a year before deciding she didn't want me anymore. she is hardwood floors and a gold rotary phone. i am fleece fiercely held between gaunt fingers and the wet mess of an undigested meal. i kick painted plaster to spur on a spanking and puke into a blue plastic bowl after losing the torn tissue that lines the back of my throat. bring me milk and cold cream to take the edge off. a thimble for your thoughts. 3. these are the first dreams that dig deep enough into me to leave a lasting mark. i can save the world and steal the spotlight, but only when i'm sleeping. a storm of standing somersaults in the shallow end of the swimming_pool. chlorine gives my sister's blonde ringlets a ghastly green sheen. there's a solarium that doubles as the southernmost american state and a stolen sewing machine in the basement. i lose myself in self-made mazes and hellscapes hallucinated on my bedroom wall. my truest friend is a feral cat who clipped her own wings to walk with me. her coat is white as stolen snow. 4. here is a typewriter that won't live to see the turn of the century. here is the funnel of my face sucking peach drink through a straw. here is me heaving myself into a bean_bag_chair until the seam splits and the beads bleed out. i am hiding in a room that isn't mine, a frightened animal with sunken skin. here is everything i would run from if my legs would listen to what my soul is saying. 5. three rented keyboards. magic potions and a pencil_case repurposed as a snare drum. apple juice and bagels for breakfast. bill withers on the balcony. sword fights with paint sticks and mailing tubes. i am an actor losing his fondness for the stage. i dream of impossible architecture and sweeping orchestral arrangements i cannot reproduce in the_waking_world. every bath needs a soundtrack. there's nothing in mine you haven't heard before. but some songs are standards for a reason. 6. there are no pictures of this place. 7. a cold war in the hard heart of summer. dog shit everywhere. a red boombox and a microphone. a bifurcated family of four. kelly crosses her legs and smiles in the back seat of a leased car on my sixteenth birthday while a man from paddington tells me every beautiful thing he knows. baking soda and borrowed moisturizer set my face aflame. the lid of a laundry basket doubles as a shield. i'll need it. 8. caught between a park and a hard place. the insistent hiss of traffic and time dragging its feet. a woman berates her deadbeat boyfriend. he sits there and takes it. a man unmoored screams until his voice gives out. a fan frames the window beside my bed. it keeps me cool and lets the insects in. i want to spend the rest of my life here. i'll be gone in seven spins around the sun. 9. this is where i'll first feel the weight and warmth of another body on mine. where i'll wait for a bullet to burn through my back while staring at stains set so deep in the carpet they won't be bribed into leaving. where some of the songs i'm proudest of will sing themselves to me. where i'll splinter and stitch the shattered shards of who i was back together until it's something i can do with my eyes closed. until it's just like breathing. so much lost and left behind. so much hope and hate for one house to hold. this is where i am now. 260816 what's it to you? who go blather from