1

I am woven of silk and husk.
My mother / my father.
Skin and tongue.

What did I say? We are all made from someone
else’s hunger.

2

            Today is the day I will call    
my father. I will reach him
on someone else’s phone. He will not remember

I live alone now. He will ask how people are —
people I can’t speak for

anymore. I will hold the dark
phone and decide to let another year
go by.             
3

It took him twenty eight
to tell me why he yelled the way he did — like fury

like spew from a split open pipe. 
He said I have to.
He said, if I hold it in it hurts.

4

What I heard was this: I never learned
another way.

5

I was always forgiving
like that — looking down
at the feet of things. I mean,

aren’t we all here thanks to someone
else’s footprints? Some of us learn early how to run.

6

My father, he piled up the pieces then left
the building to someone else.
Sure, he dropped by —

his smell (I couldn’t name it then) of half-smoked
joints and mouthwash. He’d say everything

looks good here. He’d say you’re doing just fine.
What I heard was this: I am of little use
to you.

7

At first I tried violence —
I took scissors and tried to slice

him out. Next I thought I’d give up
and just become
him. The sound of my father — the crust

of his voice — was with me, but would not come
out of my mouth

on command. When it did speak
it scared me: it was force and fire
and I couldn’t hold it in.

8

Grown now, belly full
of hunger, I stand over my father —

and with all the oops of a shattered plate
it flies — his voice — out of me
and right back onto him.

Only now he’s skinny
like framework and footless. And he cowers

like a dog would. No —
like a daughter.

9

And so I make a habit of pulling
at my threads — not to destroy so much
as to loosen.

I will not let myself get swallowed up. I will learn
another way.