my mother a dying supernova
my father a wandering world
but me — a relentless pawn
blooming from apocalyptic dust

papa taught me:
find what scares you and run
don’t walk
sprint, dive headfirst
plummet as fast as you possibly can in its direction

it’s easy to hate yourself when all your love is inside someone else
string together every hour that nearly ruined you
and tell yourself you are not divine
don’t forget the parts of you that you left behind to get here

mama told me:
you are defined by the sequences of your deoxyribonucleic acid
and by the way in which you hold another’s heart
something strange is that —
sometimes people hurt you because they are afraid to hurt you
but that is one gracefully inevitable fact of being human
and that’s what makes it okay

how far does your empathy go?
does it push your organs aside and permeate your skin?
does it leave your body for a new one altogether?
how lucky are we to have been scathed just enough?

we spend our whole lives trying to force the things we love to intersect
but take it as a truth there can be no other way
surround yourself with people you’d be thrilled to get stuck in traffic with
never underestimate the occasional importance of someone’s gentle company
one day you’ll catch yourself listening to someone
like everything they say is an answer to a question you’ve always had

Sketching surveys of desolate dreams,
purveyors of private property plots,
their impatient greed,
ignoring purple spray paint warnings.

Six feet under, resting next to Grandpa's coffin,
live valuable minerals, their rights forgotten,
a farmer of soy beans, wheat and corn,
oil & gas law to Grandpa was foreign,
but he knew why our creek's current flowed north,
upwards, defying gravity or reason, why these men had come.

One time executive cowboy hats descended on the farm,
in pickup trucks, just purchased from an oil lot in Odessa,
Grandpa took aim and raised his Beretta,
their unfit hats lost to the blast, the only harm.

I was only five, when I saw his lengths of protection,
he took me on hunts for deer, boar, quail, dove,
would always aim his rifle, fire and miss,
blamed it on his eye sight, yet hit bullseyes on paper targets.

It took me 20 years to understand why, with swallowed pride,
he purposely missed killing these animals,
cursing his eyesight instead, winning an Oscar for his humble acts,
was he blinding me from death?

There was no vision impairment, I found out in hindsight,
probably the trauma witnessed, as he died with 20/20 eyesight.

(read forward, then backward, line by line)

I ran.
Not knowing what else to do
There was so much blood on my hands
It was mine
The kitchen knife
Caught in my chest
Guilt
Consumed by
Fear
I was heightened by
Adrenaline
But running on
Wasn’t enough
While trying to stay calm,
Losing control
It was me that would end up
Dead. Because
He was
In front of me
The whole time
It was too late
Trapped
I found myself
Locked in chains
My fate was
Death.