For Bricks and Stones and Walls (and to exorcise myself of grief that refuses to leave)

Never take me at my word,
irrational and unrelenting that I am,
being your firstborn after all.

When you asked me to come back
to the house you built,
the home of my childhood,
I said,
What do I need these skeletal walls for
now that you have broken us apart,
torn us right down the middle,
like the stale spine of an old book?
You’ve skinned us inside out,
I said,
You’ve made me Bozo the clown,
entertainment stock for this
pea-brained, unintellectual,
tabloid reading madness,
and made the rest of us all
public domains
to be manhandled.
(Do you know what it’s like
to be grabbed by your viscera?
Do you realize the meaning of being
invaded?)
I have no use,
I said,
for the withered walls,
the diseased bricks and stones
of your house.

And you,
being forever unyielding, forthright,
obtrusive
(and always a little blasphemous,
more so than I will ever be,
even though I carry your genes
and your name),
demolished the house.
(It was my home!)
Now,
those phantom walls
and absent bricks
and scattered stones
feel like death.
And this pain too climbs my insides
like a fist around my ribs,
nails scratching epithelium,
eroding flesh and bone
and marrow.

You took me at my word,
with all those words I thundered
upon you in anger
and funneled rage.

You have erased us completely
now.
Perhaps we were only tied together
because our roots shared
the same (dead) house.
It seems as though
if we close our eyes,
and imagine Himalayas and valleys,
we could forget that we were once
a part of those walls and bricks and
stones.
It seems as though
if we close our eyes,
we could convince ourselves
that we never were -

father,
daughter,
blood,
kin.