Jordaan Mason
(S)mother
the doctors told him, he'd be gone by nowhis lungs full of blankets: burnt, black, and boundhe buried his family in the backyardflooded the basement, filled it up with tarwe borrowed their old clothes, and then we undressedwe stole a trampoline and made it our mattressand slept with all the houselights on waiting for them to comehe said: 'it's so much easier to believe in nothing;it's so easy to wait impatiently to die.'he pulled his pants around his anklesand he showed me all the places he went purplebecause he held too hard his own skinsince no one else would touch himand i (s)mothered him, beastlyand we shared our severed head dreamsi held him where the sickness wasand i nursed him through the nightwe stayed that way all night
From Letras Mania