Work Text:
i.
your life begins never
never
never girl in neverland with the lost boys
sister, mother, friend,
you are the first lady, self-proclaimed, it is your job to do-
-what, exactly, but keep them alive?
your boys are made of gunpowder and desperation
and you are the only one who knows how to cook
and you are the only one who knows how to sew (uniforms, flags, bandages, wounds)
and there is a fire in your soul, raging white-hot, but you know better than to let it consume you,
(not just yet.)
you are a child, still, but is anyone a child in wartime, or after it?
no, of course not
so you nurture,
nurture soldiers, feeling like you are raising a lamb to the slaughter
you set a pie in front of the littler ones
(flour, salt, water, stolen lemons; overripe)
is this their last meal?
you think over and over again
very well could be
and mine too, we are short on soldiers
and food
and armor
and everything that matters when the first shots ring out
you learn to hold a gun and it is cooler than your oven when it’s hot. cook bodies, human and animal, cook to keep yourselves alive (you survive on the battlefield because you raised yourself in the kitchen)
will this be our last meal?
better make it good.
ii.
does your crown shine, my liege?
is it too big for someone like you?
a historian who made history
a soldier
a traitor
no matter. the shine of it keeps your stomach full
(of what of blood of guts of nothing at all of the knowledge that it could be full if you wanted it to
perhaps that’s most valuable of all)
how much are your dresses worth?
more than anything your seamstress-cook-doctor-friend-seamstress could ever have made, I’m sure
velvet, silk, gems from far-off worlds
it’s worth more than my life
no, not anymore, king of all the world
Traitor
TRAITOR
traitor!
(old friend, you bastard,
were we worth so little to you?)
traitor
how much power do you truly wield?
enough to keep them out of trouble
but it’s too late for that now,
murderer, liar
you have nothing
everything
nothing, you have nothing, return to the family you loved
everything
nothing that matters, you gave it all up for this
traitor.
iii.
the transfer of power happens in a blaze of glory and shame
(glory for the tyrant, shame for the founder
an irony you would laugh at if it were not directed at you)
there you go, out you get, with only a brother in tow; do not think about all you are leaving behind
sister, brother, friend
former ally, enemy
(the difference between one and the other:
you do not really hate her
you would kill him if given the chance)
the transfer of power leaves you impoverished in the woods, in a canyon, in a cave
back to your roots, aye, good president of a forest glade
if you close your eyes you can pretend you’re back at home, home,
what is home?
a girl with soft hands and too-sweet lemon tarts
four little boys roughhousing among the trees
something divine made of wry smiles and cotton dresses in the flag colors
but she is trapped (in prison, last you heard)
one of those boys is at your side and he is little no longer
another lights a match and you see the smoke from your cave
another shows up every month with new bruises around his neck
the fourth one does not show up at all
and that divine creature made their choice long ago.
well, then, what now?
home broken up like a porcelain vase, as fragile as one, too
land split and ruled by someone who was never supposed to be here
you smile at a man you used to hate and scream at a man you used to love
bid adieu to your family and your broken home and the golden light of the sun, to your creation, forever doomed
you light your match and the world stops turning
iv.
to backtrack a little
“I banish” he says and your friends are banished, is that your father at the podium
your mother at his side
not a mother at all and neither yours by blood but then again nothing is yours by blood
except your blood, dripping on the concrete
but that doesn’t come till later
you lose two more friends when the documents are signed, or you think you do
and another when he imprisons the woman that raised you
(mother, sister, saint, not yours by blood
but there’s no one in the world with your blood but yourself)
“chin up boy you’re part of a revolution” he says. but you already were
how do you tell a man who’s already long-gone that he is wrong?
how do you correct a man who doesn’t care to be corrected?
how do you save a lover from hands that strike from behind the veil of perfect, false love?
you can’t
now isn’t that fun
you think somewhere deep down they all know what you’re doing but they don’t stop you
and is it the trust? the fear? the laziness, perhaps, that he says you all possess
or maybe they were bruised up so badly the night before they don’t have the strength to speak
well it works for you in any case
and then it doesn’t
now there is one thing in the world with your blood and it is yellow concrete walls
and the remaining sparks of a firecracker but they don’t count. they will die soon
so will you,
so will you
.
you wake up in a labyrinth still fearing for your life
then you move on to fearing for other people’s lives
brother, mother, sister, father, none of them yours, not really
and then your not-father dies, and then a warrior turns his back on you (typical)
and then your not-brother blows up a nation that you are to rebuild
(home, but no longer home, because everyone who mattered is gone)
v.
concatenation is a word your brother taught you and you think it’s the only word to describe your life
d
o
m
i
n
o
effect
from rebellion (you were eight) to war (you were eleven) to loss (you were fourteen)
from banishment (you were sixteen, and it was your home) to rebellion (again)
cycles and circles and all that hurrah.
(history does repeat)
from losing a brother and then losing yourself (you are seventeen and no one comes
to your birthday but the man who kills
you last)
another word he taught you is incendiary
you are incendiary
he is incendiary
your home was burned by it and somewhere along the line everything you have catches fire too
sinister is another word, and your only friend (or so he tells you) is sinister when he smiles
he is always smiling
it makes you wonder what exactly there is to be happy about out there
without you
were they ever happy with you?
no matter. you’re happy here (happy enough) and well out of anyone’s way
you have the ghost of him- your brother (it isn’t the same)
you have him, alive- the man who never stops smiling (you misbehave too much.
he doesn’t like it and he burns your things; he burns you; incendiary)
but you can’t help that it’s in your nature to rebel you revolutionary by trade
one too many slip-ups
your soul begins to char above a pit of molten rock
vi.
two of your countrymen die with your country that day. one of them is you.
no one notices (of course they don’t; good mister president is so much better and so much more important)
(you can’t blame them. at least he went out with a blast)
you wonder where he went, sometimes, when there are only two places to go
heaven
hell
and if you went to hell (you, who tried so hard, who did all you could) where could he have possibly ended up (he, who gave you a home and then took it away)
it’s really no matter now, you think, no matter because you couldn’t stay dead
you came back wrong,
with fire in your veins and rot in your lungs and your tongue coated with dust
but you came back
is it any better to be alive than dead?
yes, if only because you are corporeal, if only because it lets you hold an axe and cut to marrow
all those who hurt you
forgot about you and all that you did for them
well, they’ll pay now
gunpowder instead of blood and spite instead of love
scarred hands
you did try to be good; shouldn’t that count for anything?
but that won’t change what happened so it won’t change your mind
(“do you want to go back to hell?”
“no”
“do you have a choice?”
“no”
“so what will you do?”
“well it doesn’t matter now does it
I’ll be worse”)
vii.
there are daughters who don’t kill their mothers
there are sons who don’t betray their fathers
there are
a hundred
things
that you are not
a list:
loyal
loving
loved
lovable
take the L, they would tell you (unlovable one).
what you are is jealous: envying a child for nothing
for enjoying the love you never received from the same people
here are the things you no longer have:
a mother (dissolved to stardust underneath a riverbed) and a father (nothing but ashes in a country that no longer exists)
a comrade and a parent and neither all at once (a traitor twice over)
a fiancé who you were a fool to ever love (a nightmare who wears the face of a dream. talk about foreshadowing)
a grandfather (he denies you)
one, two, three uncles (one murderer, one murdered, the last one perhaps lost to time. or death. or both.)
(you wonder, then, if you are a little more similar than you thought when you were young and angry that your own father loved him more than he loved you)
what you do possess is nothing to write home about, but then again you have no more home to write home to, no parent to read your letters. (it’s a moot point anyway)
here is a list of them:
the smell of burning wool trapped permanently in your lungs
memories and scars and memories and scars (you don’t know the difference)
a man, standing in the doorway of your humble house offering to give you a home, truly
you wonder, for a minute. but in the end—
you take his hand.