Custody,
first a checkerboard of red and white squares
trapped between thick black bars.
Days of the week,
prisons,
and I was wrongly convicted.
My fingers reach for help through my metal cage,
yet only receive paper cuts
on the corners of divorce letters.
Letters drowned in blood bleed off the page
and stain my Saturdays and Sundays.
Custody,
now neatly separated into red and white columns,
walls dividing weeks and weekends.
National borders barricade one house from the other.
Two countries clash in a
war waged with
two atomic blasts burning
my culture into ash
white as paper.
Custody,
the absence of red and
the erasure of my father
from the calendar taped to
my mother’s refrigerator,
and I’m frozen in place.
Custody,
a vast snow-white plane:
One step forward,
nothing in my future.
One step backward,
blizzards in my past.
Custody,
ground made of paper so thin,
with every step,
life crumples under my feet.