Thirty years later, and you’re explaining to your kids
how dreams shine when broken
like communion bread.
You teach them to recite the kyrie eleison
over and over again
because you were taught that life and death are in the power of the tongue.
And when they point out that your tongue and the rest of your body
are antonyms,
you reply that a body is meant to be marooned
in sizzling contradictions –
what is a body if not a blancmange of errors?
You hiccup your history into a song, a proverb,
a tear, anything to make them remember
but it feels like you’re storing a remnant of yourself
in formalin jars,
waiting to be examined and discarded.
Your history is a tale of woes that mirrors a wife
sprawled on asphalt concrete
like stars splashed across the night sky
in a haphazard design.
Your history is the throat of an automobile
gulping down dust, smoke and bones.
Your history is a colony of drinking and driving
and kissing and driving
and dying and driving.
Thirty years later, and your memory is three-forked
with jammed brakes, sequels of summersaults
and blood and you’re explaining to your kids
and their faces are orbs of repressed screams
and there’s no name for this feeling.