I see my father’s shame every time I stare at a mirror. I’m a murder scene staged by the hand of indifference, butchered at the table of not being a daughter-slash-son. 

When your child cries in the forest, does it make any sound? 

Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? 

When your child cries in the forest, do you call it anything but its name? How many bodies can it bury before it becomes something different than that which you held once in your arms? 

I’m an amalgamation of every time you’ve turned your face the other way, which is to say I was born under a waxing moon, which is to say I will never be as whole as I was before the light came through. 

Strange things we carry out of our mother’s wombs. 

It has never been a matter of love, it’s about the way my voice sounds when Gardel plays on the radio of some forgotten coffee shop; about the stacks of papers by my bed that tell me I will never learn to be on my own. I wouldn’t call it hate but the terrifying realization that I was uprooted from the very ground in which you stand. Forever the shadow of the man I could not be, the girl I killed to get here. My silence & your silence can no longer coexist, they launch at each other’s throats like rabid dogs. 

I have spent my entire life writing a poem you could read. 

No luck so far. 

I’ll try again next week.