home

image by the author

(TW: this poem deals with themes of child abuse)

home is where
the ceiling’s cracked
from years of dripping raindrops
pale stalactites
sharpened to a point
for the children of shouting parents
with fluorescent spiked angles
sealed and closed in like splitting,
like skin burns,
poised on the cliffside of a sentence
trapped in stutter thick with glottal stopping,
to then be tapped off like ash after the rain comes —
sizzling with the passion of destruction
as visceral as fate
cycling itself numb
gripped in the newborn’s fist,
and the eyes smile