family (a poem)

Were my chest made of oak,
or the past centuries, the seams of a
library’s great enlightenment, or the
strange atmospheric feeling of love, could
I be opened up easier?

Could I splinter in our embrace and
taste the moss of your lips and with that
correctly set the family table in your mind,
place the fork here and the knife there,
a salad plate, a glass of milk, and a smile
that is passed around the table like a medicine ball.

Could I give you this?
Am I able to fill the voids you present
as the reason for your own solitude?
Were I an antique and handled like
a Mongolian relic, I could be balanced
onto a shelf of your consciousness and
only whisper to you wordlessly that
the tears you may dust off of me are
for you, in a language you could not
decipher and become
a treasure you are not too terrified to touch.

But I am made of nothing but a tension
between my bones,
both hollow and forever cloying,
colorless, bright, and lost;
inflating the features
of my face that are repellant
to your solitude, to your idea of
happiness;
I can reach with my fingers,
listen to the gasp of my movement,
try to shape the words after they have
created castles, but I will not.
I am this tension and this tension shapes nothing.
I am left here contemplating,
beginning to combust.