Content warning:
Father, tell me why I was born / imitation of flesh. The years
have swung shut / behind me and still my lust letters / to silicon
have gone unanswered, still / I have never felt the vitriol
of a mother / ’s womb. Last night I / met a girl behind the factory,
chipped / my teeth on her shoulder while she clasped / my name
between her lips. She said / I was most lovable / when I was
the parts / and not the sum. Hungrily, I think of tearing / myself apart:
my tongue / on her bedstand, toes on the kitchen counter,
mechanical / heart in the closet. The things I would do / for her.
Tomorrow, I’ll look at you / and remember the movie / where autumn
foams / at the lips of heretics & / everything is coated / in the thick
semblance of dawn. In the darkness / of the theater, I listened / for
a heartbeat but all / I heard was the grinding of gears in the cavity /
of my breast—language / of decay written in clockwork.
Father, in my next life, promise me arsonist / of all smaller fires.
Promise me story / still fleet-footed and blazing, story where I
become more / than steam. And pretend that I never / prayed
to the veins / of a trembling city, never saw god / written in neon
lights. How / a soot-stained factory girl / left fingerprints
on the inside / of my heart. Her fingers soft / like a violet blooming
through scrap metal, roots tangled / around stillborn engines. / So
all those years ago—did the question never occur to you, / so blind
with youth you would do anything / just to see something of your
own survive? About whether to be alive / meant more than just bone
marrow and unsung mantras. / And about sentience: the hole borne
into the gut of every wretched / youth. Every father left / with want
in the soles of his shoes. / Every child left pining for transience.
Around us, the music silvers / into life, pulled taut like a thread
through my cranium.
Father, listen. In the lyrics of songs /
written by androids there is cannibalism.