Published in Anastomoo

First Journey Alone

Leaving home, his head noisy
like a barn full of animals
Hansel, Hansel, he hears himself summoned.

Only a few more months and it will go away, his mother told him.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, he picked up new regressive habits:
-sucking his thumb
-pulling his hair
-blinking thrice often
-dreaming of wild geese pulling his arms in different directions

He ate three times his body, then nothing at all.

It will go away his mother said It will go away; he wore her leotards so often
cloth pressing skin closer, kissing his lethargic muscles

Opened and closed same door to same music: half in Morse.
He tempered his breathing
with the sound of the wind.
No wind.

Found himself attracted to: older women, suffering, pine trees growing
from his teeth, waking up with his own name
feeling burnt onto the side of his torso.

No mother. It will go away
There once was a sister, a (checkers) partner.

He always felt
1. sleepy
2. like a sore throat
3. like a disintegrating book.

Set off to find the other half
of a body. No child in body.

Somebody painted his portrait, eating.
Somebody painted his portrait, sleeping on the side of the road.

A portrait. No artist.

When he called her by name, it sounded like
he was choking. A two-indigo plum flush grew
from the cheeks.

No throat.
No body, family. Hansel ,

no

!