singed 

my memories are singed at the edges
like fragments of photographs that survived the fire

my father’s hand a ghostly apparition at one corner
my mother’s bouffant floats headless in a curlicue

the photosensitive surfaces peeling from their backing
the delaminations delimiting our bodies

here my five year old torso in yellow turtleneck
mirrors my father’s stance in thee identical shirt

our bodies extraneous in the cinders
our remainders transformed to ash

What I’m Reading:

What I don’t know
about my childhood
doesn’t destroy me.
The self emerges in
the absence of better
information.

— Billy-Ray Belcourt / “Childhood Triptych”