Only Child

Your mother’s milk

Your father’s anger

The razor wire surrounding him

And far below

Their droning engines

You lay in bed

Blowing out stars

The masters of

Your lonely kingdom

Pulled you along

With red-rimmed eyes

Through endless hours

Of drill and harness

Until you fell, surrendering

But still they never

laid the gun down,

only child

They sit like

lions in a sunbeam,

only child

And never came down

Remember all

The roads descending

To who you were,

for blurred-out miles?

You smolder now—

Coals and embers

Under the frost of indolence

I see you

never lay the gun down,

only child

You live your life

behind a window,

only child

And, dreaming,

barrel down a bloodline,

only child

Rise in the air over the mountains

Run like the days that cut them down

I see you now

As you relive them

Break like a wave, dissembling,

But when you’re lying

down among them,

only child

There is no sound

to fill the silence,

only child. Forgive them

When you lay the gun down,

only child, it’s not surrendering—

It feels like running back through time

Only you know how