Brier Rose II

Papa says I keep my life like an impossible
jumble of knotted string—a Picassoesque rendering
of my mother’s perfect coils.  Their other children
were taut linear and concise; Straight-Shooters,
Papa called my would-be-if siblings.  I never
had much of them.  So I kept my life the impossible
knot it was, in rebellious contrast to Papa’s flush
lines and immalleable wire.  No err room for kings.

Papa says my entire state of being is a health hazard,
and curious, too—like a pathologist and the world’s
a brand new epidemic.  There’s no spiral staircase
I can’t find, no KEEP OUT sign I can obey.  Papa
is into burning books, but my mother has secret shelves
for hard-copies of her wrathful blogs with pressed
lotus petals.  Truth has the sting of boiling water.
My mother worries I might be a fire hazard in dry brush.

Papa says twelve steps are more than I can do,
more than I can manage, and are his gift to me.
Cursed is a word that grows from my skin like hairs;
I’m dressed in it and there’s one more step out there,
one more secret, another treasure, a way to spin
straw into gold without alchemy, without chemistry.
There I go: tumble, tumble, end over end ‘til I’m a sack
of broken bones.  Papa’s part bear, and I take to a hibernation
where winter is forever or a hundred years or heaven.

Papa says sometimes there’s a growth spurt
for no reason, even with a lack of season, and will cover
over what we left unfinished.  I guess my words were buried
where I should have been.  I’ve still got cursed growing
on my skin, but I’ve a cream to treat it, something to slow
down my limbs and imagination.  New gears are picked.
Someone’s lips reach my lips, and I wake with my mother’s
Christian eyes and my father’s nervous hands but now
I have room for my own books and for my own steps.