My son, I'll give my life for you
—Miss Saigon, Boubil & Schonberg
Proud I could name the spasm
of yellows and broken eyelashes
dying on the sidewalk:
Butterfly.
Couldn't rise out of our circle.
The other boys
felt only the usual compassion: I plucked it
into my mouth, spit-
sticky wing strokes
slow-swallowed
glassine—
+
When I sleep with strangers
you find me
the hole in your chest
has closed.
I try to talk
but my tongue's cut to pieces
each half-remembered word
a jag of one-way glass.
+
Didn’t you find it tiresome
always singing about him
who, later and whiskey lit,
would stare at me as if I weren't his but his
name lipsticked in blood—
+
(though he did leave
mine untouched—Tam—like a room
where someone you loved once lived)
+
—and where
did you think I’d fly?
There was too much water
and no country of ours.
+
I thought I heard you singing
through the sky and sea of your self.
+
If it was a song I heard
it swallowed its own tongue.