if there is no door then i dream of a door

holding my own hand while asleep. 

I think about the tortured artist a lot.

The idea of turning pain into art.

Taking sorrows, ugly feelings,

moulding them like dirty, wet clay

’til they form a shape that means something. 

“Why do we fall?”

The question circles

my brain

as I attempt to bring

my father’s legacy

to justice.

A man full of endlessness comes home,

puts his coin purse on the table

drops loquats in a ceramic bowl.

He props his sword

—clean, still sheathed—

against the table.

When fear consumes me

As you drive your foot

Down on the gas,

The fumes

Burning my nose

As the trees blur past me,

dinner after daffodils under dim

amber point of view. five golden glowing yolks

to find a furrowed brow

I ask her, “Wouldn’t it be too cruel

for a god to make us and nothing

after?” If she were my parrot,

I could point

to a silver bowl, saying: “What’s that?

What’s that, again?”

When it begins to sink—

When it pains me to believe

that something won't change even though you try,

And all your words mean nothing

all these words are tossed aside

I do not know what he wishes me to write, but I do not know what he sees

 when he looks at me

 for he stares quite differently.

Are you lonely, Little Rose?

Call me. I shall listen to you.

Somewhere in the distance,

the birds chirp through heavy rain.

My name was Daniel.

Son of a former slave-turned-inventor.

An artist by trade. Skilled with a wet paint brush.

I inhale everything through the holes of myself

because I grew where my mother kept her salty tears

and it's lived in my DNA ever since.