When my father sleeps the mosquitos come out to feast.
His phlegmy breaths sing their sweet dawn chorus.
Thick black hairs mark the landing strips,
juddering pale skin their crash mats.
And inside that head, where the noises clamour to be heard,
there is the terror that breaks all.
Inside that head his fantasies of me live,
playing out days of my youth in pretty little moments.
Where my face ages in fits, where my limbs don’t grow but double.
They say we have the same eyes. But our eyes haven’t seen the same things.
I have watched this face pallor;
fill the fat sacks of its skin and wilt once more.
I’ve watched the hairs grow from my body,
seen the inspirations of lust in my soft muscles.
His eyes have seen the breaking of a man. The man-born.
Lead heavy like the fog of his breaths,
they’ve watched the blood thicken.
They’ve seen their own capillaries burst day by day.
Seen the same small streets.
Seen too many goodbyes.
“I’m here now,” I whisper, knowing he will never know I did.
“Your diseases run through my veins too, and how afraid I am of them.
How afraid I am to be you.”
He just breathes, those phlegmy breaths rising and falling in his chest.
Those eyes deep in some fading memory,
eager to place every piece in the pits of his mind.
To save them from the riots that burn through his brain.
The same that burn through me.