temmoku
I am molded
exactly the way my mother
wants me to be.
Coloured with the
tones of her skin under a thick
blanket at night,
not my father’s
hide. They are identical to
an eye untrained
by fear. She takes
a pair of scissors shaped as a
crane and cuts the
hair that springs from
under my scalp. I wonder if
the blades might fly.
My hair does fly,
settles on the ground, and what’s left
on my head is
short, black
lifelines.
My ancestors on my
mother’s side dug for clay. I am
told by my other
grandfather that we
are born of clay from God. There is
no god in the
ground my parents
are born on, but neither is there
at my birth. I
am my father’s
son. I am my grandfather’s hope.
I am the heir
of spices and
herbs, yet my mother fills the house
with pills. Maybe
if I take the
right one, it will purge the curse that
follows me. I
swallow a type
of guilt as he holds me. This is
an act of love.
I am an act of
love.
On the day of
my birth, my mother rips me out
early because she
does not want to
keep waiting. I am torn from the
Earth still drooling.
The dead still dream.
When my grandfather dreams, it is
of a stranger
wearing my face.
Buried deep in the Earth, coloured.
Malleable.
I am meant to
be shaped by the path my mother
puts me upon.
I still find clay
underneath my fingernails,
dark and salty.
I am an act of
love.