​          You are eight when you fold into the  

air conditioner hum, the solitary light of  

          your bedroom. In the softness, overheard  

conversations. You have thin walls, built on  

          vintage promises, woven in fractured glass. 

Through the cracks, watch his mouth slant  

          upwards, open wide to take in a visitor’s dialect. 

Bwai becomes boy. Fatha becomes father. 

          Farther, the gap between tongue and lisp between 

hand and nakedness. By twenty-two, the  

          calluses have smoothed themselves into the  

body of a stranger. She is sweet, white, perfect. 

          Rice filling in the hollow of barren ribs, the  

wrinkles of your fatha's​ father’s face, 

          the hunger—desperation, for the rope around  

your neck, frayed threads of handsewn  

          catholic school uniforms, and taut skin. You want  

to feel nothing, so you marry her.  

          Take her limbs into your throat and swallow  

yourself whole. Birth a kid or two. Become  

          nuclear. At fifty-four, you carry his casket on  

your shoulders, crumple into grief like his  

          paper bag lunches. You weave your fingers into 

this fate, spin yourself in a red web of forgetting 

          forgiving, and live with the growing pains. It’s only  

sometimes you’ll remember Genesee Street.  

          ​The air conditioner and your one solitary light.  

How you always walked home alone. How the  

          sidewalk glistened in the rain. How you never had  

                              ​an umbrella.