Bio

Before you had a name

        Bone-man I called you. I called you blink,
belly shudder, tag-along. Weren’t you a minnow

        then, swimming against the stream? I called you
mine but that’s a laugh, right? A spinning yarn,

        the story all parents wear like a hairshirt—close
to the skin and constant in its hurt,

        a bleat you can’t unhear. Listen to the lie—the way
it goes on, kvetching in the night. Even at your smallest,

        a clump of cells in bloom, proliferation in rapid time lapse—
even then, the fibs you told were real whoppers.

        I’m yours. I’m yours. Grow me right
and I’ll never leave you.