rumor

this is death-defying
embarrassment that will
surely be on permanent record
seven lives from now i will still
recall this moment with perfect
clarity and utter agony

i know this because i feel
my fingers tense
around the keys in my pocket
when he calls me
my old name
post-abdication —
i left my post years ago
that title doesn’t belong
to the one who carries these bones

i bring out the flesh
i go home with it
and i’m a child again
i go home with sage in my shoes
because i seem to come back
with bitter medicine
with a shadow to reconcile
and it’s never
from the ones i’d expect —
it is always the ones with the glint
in their eye teasing and testing
the boundaries and limits because
i carry a little faggotry in our family
but i hardly have the heart to claim it

something new
tethered itself around my rib cage
i was the one who always
cried when i was teased and
i can feel it, curling in,
they’re saying it
somebody’s tired
it’s nap time for the little one

i cry and fumble with what
to do with my hands and feet
i knock all of the heirlooms down
and fling common sense aside
i am too clumsy to belong here
i am the family jester juggling
fragile paper thin mandarins
and somehow the punchline is
the little girl i used to be