They didn't notice me until I went crazy. Until the lights went out and they heard me moving around the house, my head to the wall to force out blood, or sleep. They feed me tea by the pint. Two sugars and milk to keep me awake. I need to play the patient. It makes me their son again.
Food arrives on a tray with 20mg of distraction. I can smoke outdoors in the cemetery walk while father sleeps with the larvae and embryonic Earth. My brother has turned eighteen and I have become the canary to his coal mine. He can live in the spaces that I have died.
There is always movement on the stairs. Contestants cheer miserably beneath me like a slave-ship bet of the first to their death. The ocean rolls. The world keeps turning. She is wearing sunglasses and painting toenails into colours I had made her forget.
Mother, take me to the straitjacket cellar. I will lie still and let the moths drink from my eyelashes. There are books and women meant for better eyes. There are trees for a different childhood. There is nothing left but to learn a silence. To become a whisper