savage raze my skin and teeth are wet with what i wasn't willing to wash away. my mind is clear. every payphone in this place is a faucet with a dishonest face. i leave mine running long enough to flood the floor i'm on. when i'm home, i eavesdrop on a conversation between the man and woman who made me. their voices carry through the thin boards beneath my feet. my mother says she thinks i would be happier in another_country. the narrowness of the life i've made here worries her. my father sees things differently. he remembers rambling through the grasslands of his youth, looking for vampires, when a firecracker whizzed past his head. the same thing that damaged his hearing saved his life. "there are no vampires," my mother says. my father paints the point she's missed with his words. "life is a savage city," he tells her. "yours is just one body within it." 250426 what's it to you? who go blather from