where do you come from?
she asked me

and i told her,
to the best of my abilities,
where i was from.

i said i was born in the hell-oases of American heaven.

that i materialized from the shrieking avalanche of velocity itself
that i must have simply started to move
at some Point
and howled at the emptiness around that begged my primordial step.

i told her that howl was my father
and the Emptiness, my mother
that the pain of Eden being born, razed
and made fallow time and time again
had welled up a deep desire in me to die

to forget, and start again new.

when i told her i was adopted
and that i didn't really know my parents, she laughed
and shot me a glance that knew.

i spoke about layers laid down by Aphrodite's own gemchildren
of their soft kisses on my soft teen skin
how i came out of a hole that ripped in that skin
and met up with myself again

and glad to be new.

she looked upon me the kindest
when i told her i forged myself in tinny pattering etudes
on guitars, strung
in patient worksmanship,
and balanced the grave humanity
and its facts so grave on shoulders
that had begun to shiver deeply

i'll never forget it,

she looked at me
with the most profound
empathy.

you never were

she said,

and she spoke the slow truth.