Our Eyes Avoiding the Sparrow

My mother gave me life with a shove of her breath. I was left from her womb. The stillborn took too long to embrace me, horns undeveloped so I waited. And as I cried, her pores wept with the pain of energy like my father that July night. It was hot, I knew. Nothing could’ve stopped them. But it was six years later when I grew into a beast when her legs strapped around his torso for better reasons, her fist heaping for the food he brought home slapped her dinner in the face. They didn’t listen to the silence of my sister whispering to God, begging that the shoving cop cuffing him wouldn’t hurt him. My father returned home where my grandmother gave him a heart fluttering with every meal she served him and every kiss goodnight. And I might’ve understood why he couldn’t give me one if I was emotionally there to be aware of the wind in their eyes. It choked me years later but I didn’t need it. It was to convince the devil he won.

And I’m sensitive as fuck so everyone told me I was strong so I could shut the hell up. It didn’t work but the supremacy birthed my self esteem while my sisters wallowed elsewhere, trying to find something I wasn’t aware of. I was inured by their hurting retort. Was it food to nurture their eighty pounds? I had it. Was it company to return to me alone? I became lonely. And we pained as a group. Sitting in the chairs my tuition accounted for, I long to be stopped and plead with and shoved with paining energy, pores weeping like I do everyday.