A Leaf of Me

[1] My father charts the hours. I become a twig. I'm the only kid on my school bus with rusted wings. I take up two seats. I don't want to go. My mother writes my absent notes in broken Polish. I’m loosening my collarbone. I’m lonely in my tree. The moon is a shattered kneecap, sappy and slow.

[2] My family is on a game show wearing Indiana formal. The host can't pronounce our last name. We don't mind. Neither can we. In Polish it means Surprise. Or Shock. Or Sudden Bewilderment. I hate to say it but the game is staged. The moth in the judge's cough syrup is trying its best.

[3] Mother forces Father to slobber up the slop. Father watches Mother run on the roof. Mother scoops leftovers and holds them over Father. Father toggles between the tongue and the spleen. Mother seems teeming with ready-to-go screams. Father longs for bong water, clean and full of ice. Mother pretends to be nice once hungry relatives arrive. Father dies and no one notices. Sitting there, relaxed in the chair, sprawled on the couch, the family all around him, talking about mouths.

[4] Hello, grandfather clock. From my balcony, I watched you as you fell through the sky. They were timed, your chimes, twelve long gongs as you passed 120 windows of the newly opened hotel. A stunt. A lunch break. I stood and saw with lettuce stuck in my teeth. The ground you hit was padded. The magic, I knew, was fake.

[5] I was once a balcony. I am no longer a balcony. I am not a balcony. My father is a ladder. My mother is a clothesline. I won't tell you what I am. I don't know you. I don't know why I'm here. My ears are my ears are my ears are my ears.