My body is no miracle, and: How We Became Dead Men, and: After a Burning I Came Out to My Father

My body is no miracle

Before I discovered home I sat on a beach to hear the waterin my body speak to the water going back into places I've never been to.

I want to tell you about my voice floundering in water,getting lost because I hid it from my fatherwho pretended to be asleep when I called the boy who spoke Portuguese on the phone.

And nothing gets better, not the boys setting fire to your doll's hair,not your mother asking where you learnt that language from,where you got the magic to make boys drop like dead leaves behind you.

You do know some songs play forever, do not forgetthe boy who you thought understood will say at nightI don't want you touching me, no funny business here.And you will grow smaller, dirtier, you will stay awakebecause you don't want your body moving on his own.The morning won't bring smiles, your father's phone callwill be a bullet, the exact size that shatters bones.

There is no place where you will be accepted,even God has moved out of you,it is all right because you will search for castoffslike you, souls filled with love in dark places,souls who knew how home also is war.You will raise a house together from darkness,from love, from all the words that has thrownyou into the cold and there will be no gospel there,

just the boy who begged God to take away this thirst,the boy whose mother burnt his five fingers,the boy whose body couldn't believe lightis somewhere you lie down and sleep withoutsearching for blows, the boy whose bodyknew nothing but darkness,you will sing these beautiful bodies to sleep.

I do not know when I became saved,when my body knew life exists without tiptoeingaround my father's house, praying he doesn't hear our giggles,praying my love won't wake the anger resting in his fist.I do not know when my body started saying things it felt like saying,there was no miracle to my salvation, just a boy walking on a lonely road,walking into other boys who knew salvation lies in raising a home in the wild.

How We Became Dead Men

I've stopped seeing the sea or the silenceof a boy inside another boy or the soft cryof a mother whose song can't sing a son back to life.Lately I've been seeing death in my reflection in the mirrorand I want to leave a part of me on the body of a boyI was scared to love. How does a sculptor whittle wooduntil it becomes part earth, part him, a marriage of sweatand blood and shreds of wood? Something mysteriousonly an eye full of tears can see,something to hide in a room full of bookswhere father sleeps, a lion waiting for the scent of blood.There is a type of hunger that breaks the nightinto sweaty palms, into a body waiting to die at dawnand I have been dying since my mouth couldn'tsay love and live, couldn't say my lover withouthands soaked in kerosene grabbing my body,

a man waiting to be whipped into healing.The pastor said I don't understand how a man finds lovein another man. My mouth couldn't say tender, couldn'tshow him how I've dreamt of a touch that makes a flowerblossom into colors closer to a miracle.On the flyover I hear voices going back home,how does a man bring a son back to lifeonly to break him into an empty sky?Say it: when they locked me in a room full of prayers,the door slowly becoming the gateway to a prison,my mother leaving behind him, no trail of salt, nothingto...