BPR 47 | 2020
The face beneath your face is older, stranger,
crushed and battered, ready to emerge.
And under that, no face at all. I call it
childhood, because I recollect so little,
and in my closet, when my mother died,
I found a skull I loved, phosphorescent
and therefore deadly, alive with whatever
shine it hoarded. It smelled of sulfur then,
like my great aunt who asked if I loved Jesus,
then held my hand in the bones of hers.
I feared her in ways I feared no death.
I was just a boy after all, my skull a toy.
And when it glowed, it shed the stuff of angels
and ice. Before a darkness took it back.