Pride

​

Pride

The day I came out

as crustacean, I thought

I couldn’t be further

from mortality. To hear

unbodied shrieks from

corners, my first and

last child. Since then,

I had been smeared

across the spotlights

and had appalled my

patrons, now that I am

a vehicle: carnival of

phantom limbs, bones

that want. Of course,

I buried my darling

stillbirths and someone

else’s unborn live ones,

having encountered the

fullness of my family’s

desire. Unbeknownst:

creatures of dirt and

exoskeleton being

the most adept at

manslaughter. That is

to say, I felt something

turn and not brake.

Such is my pride:

what ends in me ends;

a one-man, one-night-

only performance.

Once, another dung-

beetle stationed itself

in the middle of a

footslogged pavilion.

Such is its pride: to be

witnessed, permanent,

representative of a

species and a weather,

even as a paralysis or

specimen. Meaning,

either be glorious or

offer theater. Such is

nature’s grandest lesson.

I marvel at the prospect

of neither. I map myself

out of my hometown

and return as a pretense,

the finest specimen of

what could’ve been,

what is presumed to be.

Back home, they’re glad

my coming-out is linear

and surgical. But I had

the hardest time leaving

my skin. To battle the

instinct of human lesions,

to turn infinite and then,

uninheritable. To the

onslaught of onlookers:

I put on stage wear

and a show.