The boy’s feet are bound to the floor, body held before a mirror.
Cold lake, the glass spinning his near-naked body into fable, or cautionary
tale. How, how it sings back. Diamond-toothed doppelgänger.
The chambered hallways of his heart bisected, something like
a cathedral spire piercing through, thorny fingered; the enemy,
caught in his eye’s lazy gleam. The fluorescents whining overhead.
There is far too much skin to shed; it’s fastidious in its hold of him.
He doesn’t have the years required to unbind himself, to know what’s real;
can you blame him for mistaking a stranger’s touch for kindness?
Seismic: the hand clasping his wrist, roughing his chest, over his mouth.
He might never sleep again. Lips dry, eyes swallowing light. Every sound
scratching flesh. He doesn’t hear the night mother calling from beyond
the black-out curtains. When it rains, it pours his hot guts onto the black
and white tile. Germinates the future with his certainty that he will never
feel this way again. Even now: in the back of his skull,
a parable unraveling. An old preacher’s words like whiplash, hot sting
of bare thigh against the pew’s modest wood. Should he have known
how the past can come squirming up through a stomach, worms
up through mud during a storm? The living do their best not to drown here.
When did the dark grow talons so fine? He shudders, cold sweat.
Tired boy. Sick boy. Boy with a body of wet-dark tombs.
Cold mirror and his cold face staring out from the glass.
Glass defaced with crude sharpie sketches, a cock ejaculating across canvas.
A phone number. A name. The future, again and again.
His limbs fall one by one like autumn. His limbs are not his own anymore.
The high keeps coming, just as he was told. High beams
severing shadow in two. Everyone gets a piece when he gets this way.
He hopes you’ll stay.
Daniel Brennan
Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and coffee devotee from New York. Sometimes he’s in love, just as often he’s not. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize/Best of the Net, and has appeared in numerous publications, including The Penn Review, Sho Poetry Journal, and Trampset. He can be found on Twitter @DanielJBrennan_
