i am your oyster pearl

i am alive only when i cry

I was a floating bee in your dumpling sac.
Like a god baking bread, sweet breakfast rolls,
You charmed my hands soft and seasoned,
The length of skinny church candles.
With your calloused touch of forsaken dreaming,
You burned smoke sting curses in my eyes.

I was a child playing in your farm fields
Of coconut trees and concrete slab chicken islands.
On makeshift wooden planks, I streamed down hillside planes,
Your loud echoes, omens of split bones and popped elbows.
There was magic here, joyous pockets, morning dews, 
A runny egg yolk flood over knee-high meadows.

I was happy,
I’d never grow old.

Yet I grew from a tiny, fragile-bodied berry,
Sometimes open-fleshed and bruised, but mostly sour.
Your wrinkled face downcast at the sight of my spoiled roots;
Did you pick my fate like a frigid low-hanging fruit?
You traced old wives’ tales with the lines of my palms,
Teary crescent eyelash winks as your poisoned apple fell far.

Beyond the winded fleas and carabao whips,
You caught moths by white light after grayscales.

I was birthed your oyster pearl, shiny in saline waters;
I am alive only when I cry, like the wails of dying geese,
Like a foreign parasite weaned from the host body.
In scrapbooks you glued our wasted bloodlines, 
Prophetic ribbons on hairs of babes for sacrificial lambs.
To catch gold stars for you, to fly you over heaven’s peak.

Over time, overlooking
My sapphire blues,
Your riddled short fuse.

For on string beads I knot Hail Mary’s on your doorframe.
Do you hear the heel clicks of this spinster grief?
I want to find Joseph, I want to grow old.
To lasso stars cross-stitched over your farm fields.
To shepherd young babes away from men’s slaughterhouses.
To wrap my name in pious worship without dying grasp.