Tattoo

yours is a story of tangential relativity
— of capturing time in a firefly jar.
the frames of my lost father you have stolen
into the ghostly flash flood of a plastic valley.

mine is a story of sequential obliteration
— of having so many specters disappeared from my chest cavity
that I have forgotten what haunts my lineage.
strategic (auto-)elimination of genealogy is
the most complete of tragedies.

so you must know then, what pain
I must have left behind in
creating chiasmus — and what that has cost.

X marks the spot of brutal delineations because
it leaves no room for permutations; there is
no forgiveness for fathers lost in time,
no remorse for arterial severances.
but you and I both know it wasn’t me who

inked that mathematical ultimatum in the lines of
my hand and
my mother’s face.

no, an eight-year-old child
would never understand the incongruence and indelible permanence
of a syringe — would never have understood
the promises you extracted.

—Contributing writer Kelsey Chen’s column, “Body Language,” is a creative column combining visual arts and creative writing to explore the body as a medium of political expression.