Prodigy

You swayed in supermarkets when we first met,
all epithets of sequined breath,
your famous blue raincoat, hard-pocketed
with pens and poems.

And you of sinister England,
of spit sour with spiked drinks,
walked like a swarm.
Tempestuous, you seemed immune to birthdays,
immune to crowing flat-lines
wearing children's clothes and a criminal's name.
And you, silent, glowed simplicity that just
choked us.

This time I do not stumble.
I have told you that when you sing it sounds like crying.
I have said that is explanation enough
and soaked my bleeding hands.
You flinch. You are embarrassed for me.

I know this, so later,
I will ask myself when you will die,
how you will die and why
so I can finally decide maybe
you weren't so much and weren't always right
after all.

I have tried to think how
your stomach must ache through the thumb-circumference waist.
I have tried to imagine clumsiness,
shrill red crosses, blushes like fierce clots of fireflies
or anything as messy and wrong.

But in foul memoirs, I have heard you describe,
in perfect chastity -
your ingenious sympathy for murderers,
princesses, castrati,
you preserve summers you never had,
thick as father's books,
crunching guilty sugar in Lent,
bursting bright liquor, your ironic split teacups
and always, always burning
while I ache
older and ending.